WVHooligan - Soccer Blog

Gosh, sometimes you just see something and think “you gotta be kidding me”. I know Columbus Crew fans have been getting some serious press this season about their actions. While I’ve taken up for them in some ways, I see a report like this one below and wonder really what goes on with some of them.

Surely by now most of you know of the incident at the friendly between West Ham United and the Crew this weekend. At halftime some West Ham fans apparently went near the Crew fans at Crew Stadium and from there things got a bit too ugly.

Crew supporters began directing chants toward the rival fans, and fights quickly broke out between more than 100 Crew fans and at least 30 West Ham fans. Columbus police officers and Crew Stadium security staff eventually separated the groups.

Highway Patrol officers arrested one fan outside the stadium for disorderly conduct, Patrol spokeswoman Anne Ralston said. A dispatcher didn’t know whether Columbus police had made any arrests inside the stadium.

This is the second incident Crew fans have been involved in this season. As New England celebrated its winning goal at Columbus on May 24, a fan shouted a racial slur at Revolution forward Kheli Dube, who scored in the 89th minute. Dube is black. The incident prompted a league investigation, with MLS commissioner Don Garber saying that the fan will be banned from league games for life if officials were able to identify him from a video that captured it.

Honestly by now its gotta be a put up or shut up kind of deal for some of these fans. While I felt the whole “video-gate” situation was blown a bit out of proportion by some out there, seeing an in-game brawl between fans at a damn friendly is not cool.

Come on, at a friendly.That was everything but friendly.

But let’s not blame those Crew fans for this all though. Those 30 or so West Ham fans apparently started it all according to various wire reports. They were the ones seen going towards the Crew supporters. I’m sure had this been anywhere else in the world the home fans would have responded in the same manner as the Columbus ones did. Let’s be real honest about that here okay.

It always seems like the guy who responds to the first punch throw is always the one that gets caught or punished the most. I will try to remain in contact with some of my contacts that I know were probably at the game or at least know what really went on. Once I get some response back from them I will try to pass it along to you. Don’t worry, I won’t go MLS-Rumors style on this though and continue to talk about it for days on end just to stir up stuff.