THE FOOTBALL PLAYED ABROAD is a sport in which there is less violence than the football played in the United States. Names are taken by the referee, players are cautioned, but only occasionally is a man sent off the field for deliberate roughness. Since there is no substitution in European football, the loss of a player is a severe penalty because then a team must play with only ten men against eleven. To lose a goalkeeper or an important forward can be disastrous.
But if there is usually no great amount of violence on the field in games between top-class teams, violence persists in the stands. In Spain and Italy especially, the fans go crazy, and football riots are front-page news everywhere.
Recently a French sporting newspaper published an advertisement which read: “Monsieur Collet, the referee of the football match last Sunday between the Racing Club de Calais and the Stade Roubaisienne, wishes to thank the members of the Calais team for saving his life after the match.” A joke? No, it happened. Football abroad is a serious affair. Many teams keep a car under the stadium during their games. The engine is running and a chauffeur sits at the wheel to rush the referee to safety if the home team loses.
Sometimes riots get out of hand. Fixtures in the stands are uprooted, rocks, bricks, and even seats have been torn loose and hurled onto the field. Players have been shot at during a contest. In the coalfields of Yorkshire in the North of England, they throw what is called a Barnsley snowball. This is a lump of coal covered with snow and hurled at an offending referee.
The day of the game at Rouen, a great broad river of people flowed through the turnstiles of the stadium. Young people, old people, poor people, rich people, people of all kinds and classes. Men in expensive Alpine hats, men in cloth caps and work clothes. Thousands of women and girls were there, for the game had breached the sex barrier because of the attraction of the young football genius on the French side. Speculators were getting fifty dollars a ticket outside, and selling all they could obtain.
Many Germans carried huge banners of greeting from across the Rhine. München Grüsst Frankreich. Berlin Grüsst Frankreich. Bremen Grüsst Frankreich.
Then outside the stadium came an explosion. A car had caught fire. Two men leaped from it and were lost in the crowd. Successive blasts rocked the car as one bunch of firecrackers after another went off. The fire was put out by the Rouen Fire Department—luckily on hand and waiting—and policemen, who then searched the parked vehicles. Many were filled with fireworks and other explosives, guns, even small cannon to celebrate the victory or perhaps menace the winners. These cars were seized and put under guard.
Inside, the chanting, cheering, and sometimes jeering crowd roared at everything. Hawkers passed through the stands selling programs, beer, and souvenirs, from T-shirts to ties and blazers with France or Germany embroidered on the pockets. At last the German team trotted single file onto the field. Thousands of horns blew triumphantly, thousands of Germans waved red-black-and-gold banners with drill-hall precision, left-right, left-right, left-right, all in unison.
“Hoi, hoi, hoi,” they shouted. This was their team, the one that had shut out Torpedo Moscow for the first time. The noise from the stands beat down on the field like heavy surf pounding on sand or shale.
The Germans wore blue shorts and white jerseys. Then the French appeared in dark red jerseys and white shorts. Immediately thousands of tricolored flags sprang up on the opposite side, fluttering in a kind of irreverent pattern of color in the afternoon sunshine. All over the stands strangers addressed each other.
“There! That’s Jules Garnier, Number four.”
“That’s Bonnet....”
“That’s Laffont, six. With the bandage around his left knee. He was hurt against Lille, you know. They said he might not play.”
“Which is Varin?”
“Varin! You’ve never seen Varin! He’s Number two. That’s him, the tall boy who looks like an angel.”
“Ah, so that’s Varin. We only saw him once on television. We’re from Marseille.”
“We’ve come all the way from Bordeaux. Ah, there’s Rudy now.”
The referee, in blue shorts, high blue stockings and a blue jersey, appeared below. He was Rudolph Stampfli, a former fullback for Zurich and once a Swiss international who spoke four languages. He was known as the best referee in all Europe, firm, decisive, noted for his quick decisions, and possessing a vast knowledge of the game.
The two captains conferred with him, the tall baron twitching the brim of his gray cap, that lucky cap he had saved since before the war and wore only in an international match. Garnier, the captain of France and the massive outside right who had competed fifteen times for his country, shook the hands of the Munich goalkeeper.
On the sidelines the two teams waited. The tension built up and up. The players longed for the game to start. After the opening rush downfield they would forget everything—the crowds, the shouts, the whistles—everything save that round balloon at their feet.
It’ll be all right, each man told himself. I’ll be fine as soon as play begins.