Last night, in Dortmund, a moment which stopped the hearts of us all. Reports of explosions near the home team bus. It reads like something from a bad novel, but this is real. This happened, and now football is the latest front in an ever expanding war.
It is both frightening to contemplate this and infuriating.
Who are these people, who think this is somehow legitimate?
Who are these people who think that this represents some kind of advantage?
You get to a point with this stuff that you stop wondering where the next attack is going to come. It could be anywhere, at any time. What sticks out most is that the world, as a whole, carries on as before. Whatever these people thought would happen hasn’t. And it won’t. When they attack cities those cities do not disintegrate into anarchy. They come together like never before. The bonds of community do not shatter. They grow stronger.
So it will be here, with this. If the Football Family really is under attack, they’re going to find out that for all our tribal rivalries, for all our petty grievances, for all our one-upsmanship and baiting, that something stronger exists here, something that transcends it all. Football is a shared experience and fans from all across the world understand one another and share a common relationship which is not always appreciated or even admitted to.
We are the same.
As a Celtic fan, writing a Celtic blog, I know all about rivalry. The Bad is something we can see every day. But I also know about The Good. About how our greatest manager helped with the injured on the night of the Ibrox Disaster, which brought this city together, united in grief. I know of how our rivals’ greatest manager carried the coffin of Tommy Burns, and about how their supporters were amongst those who laid wreaths outside the ground.
The rivalries are nothing.
Every single one of us knows the same emotions, cherishes memories the same way, and believes in the same fairy-tale endings and the same promise of tomorrow. We’ve all sat in stands and stood on terraces and ridden the rollercoaster of the highs and the lows, and it’s why when any group of people get together, anywhere, for a social gathering of any kind it’s the subject that comes up again and again. That’s not about having a short attention span, or having nothing else in our lives; the minute you talk about the best goal you’ve ever seen or the best game you’ve ever been at or one of those highs or lows, those moments of joy or despair, you can see many other people reach back and pull on that common thread.
We understand. We get it.
We are the same.
It’s why Hillsborough is a word we used to whisper before the courage of the families and the struggle for their justice made speaking it out loud okay, and a slogan of solidarity. It’s why none of us can utter the word Heysel even now without feeling our hearts sink a little. It’s why when someone says Bradford you know what they mean. When someone says Munich you only need a moment’s pause to know what they refer to.
They are the horrible moments when something struck at a thing we care about, something we love, and those names can silence a room.
It’s by the grace of God and, ironically, European football’s dark history of violence that we’re not adding the word Dortmund to that list of shared sorrows. The Dortmund team bus was armoured like a tank. The thick windows, provisionally designed to stop bricks and Molotov’s thrown by rival fans driven beyond the point of rationality, turned out to be very adept at stopping shrapnel and resisting the shock wave of explosive devices.
Who knew? Someone must have, somewhere.
Someone thought this out, saw a moment like last night, and made sure the guys on that bus were well protected. In some long forgotten room in some crisis centre, there must be a file stuck in a cabinet for an awful event just like this, situated, perhaps, near those which exist in case there’s ever a re-run of that non-football tragedy in Munich, which touches us all in its own way and reminds us that what happened last night isn’t a new idea.
The first thing to note is this; the game itself will go on.
It kicks off tonight, in just a few hours.
That should be the first hint for those who planted those bombs that things are not going to pan out as they had hoped. Football simply put the matter to one side, and 24 hours after those devices went off the curtain will go up and the game will start. This is not about commercialism and the need for the TV companies and the advertisers to get what they paid for; this is about sending out a message to the word that they lost. That they didn’t change anything.
That things carry on as before.
The show goes on. It always does.
And the fans in that stadium will not stop singing for 90 minutes straight … and this time the rivalry will not matter at all. Last night, Monaco fans sung the word “Dortmund” to their rivals. German locals offered Monaco fans wishing to attend this evenings game places to stay in the city. The message, like the one that went out from the away club and from clubs all around the world was one of solidarity, friendship, respect and yes, even love.
We are the same.
An attack like this on one club is an attack on all of us. In the face of that we stand together. In the face of that, our own club, and Liverpool’s, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, becomes the anthem for football all around the globe. This is a Family.
A group has claimed responsibility. Madmen around the world always want to be known for their crimes. It’s one of the defining characteristics of these folk; deep down they all crave attention, they all want to be heroes. It’s no surprise that they are finally targeting “celebrities”; it’s fame they want for themselves.
Well they’ll get it, for the utter futility – and failure – of the attempt.
The world was shocked yesterday, but the perpetrators picked the wrong time for their “spectacular.” Had it horribly succeeded they’d have got their major headlines; as it is, their failure failed to knock Sean Spicer and Trump and Russia and Syria off most of the front pages. The attempt was clearly sophisticated in design, but it was shoddy in execution. In the meantime, what will make headlines tonight are the courage of the players and the kindnesses of fellow fans.
Those are the things that matter here; it’s the memories of that which will endure.
Football has been waiting for this. All of us, deep down, expected it somewhere, sometime, and the horror of what might have been is lessened by that and by relief that this wasn’t the destructive assault the perpetrators intended.
But we are gladdened too, and our resolve strengthened, by that coming together, that unified response, that sense of a house united.
We are the same.
And together we will stand, against whatever’s coming next.