V.League 2018: Don't let "the tangerine make the orange suffer"

This is considered an extreme and violent act by some fans of the visiting team Hai Phong. Not only did they light flares in the stands, they also threw them onto the field, causing the match between the home team Hanoi and the visiting team Hai Phong to be interrupted.

This is considered an extreme action by Hai Phong fans. Photo: Internet

However, in the end, the tournament organizers only fined Hai Phong Club 20 million VND and the Hang Day Stadium organizers the same amount, without mentioning any punishment for the person who set off the flares.

Remember, in the 2017 season, Hai Phong fans also continuously threw flares onto My Dinh Stadium and were punished by the Organizing Committee by being banned from attending away matches for the remaining matches of the season. However, this punishment became a "farce" because in the following matches, Hai Phong fans still brazenly went to away matches without being punished. Meanwhile, the stadium organizers who allowed the flare incident to occur were punished for "not ensuring the safety and security of the match".

On forums and fan club pages, some clubs believe that the V.League Organizing Committee needs to have clear sanctions to handle and assign specific responsibilities to individuals with extreme behavior, avoiding general punishments such as "banning fan clubs", "fining fan clubs", or fining stadium and team organizers, while the violations were caused by a few extreme individuals.

The fan association believes that general punishment should not be applied but specific responsibility should be assigned to each individual. Photo: Internet

As the true fans of Hai Phong say: Those are people who want to express themselves, in the name of the fan club. We cannot ban all Hai Phong fans because of a few people like that, we need to strictly handle these cases to avoid "one bad apple spoiling the barrel".

According to experts, to avoid the recurrence of the situation of extremist fans lighting flares and causing disorder in the stands, the tournament organizing committee and the football stadium organizing committee must have surveillance cameras in the stands, along with the control of the authorities to quickly identify those with extremist behavior to handle "the right person, the right crime", then this situation will be corrected.

Otherwise, from setting off flares to fighting in the stands between overzealous fans of football teams in decisive matches of the season will become complicated and unpredictable.

And the important thing is that if we keep giving general punishments to the wrong people, it will lead to a situation of "everyone in the village is equal", not deterring the extremist fans.

Meanwhile, in some foreign football tournaments - where there are many extremist fans, called football hooligans - they are also terrified of the strictness of the tournament's Organizing Committee.

Accordingly, the Organizing Committee of these tournaments believes that the use of flares and smoke bombs in the stands can affect the safety and lives of other fans, so those who engage in this behavior will be immediately arrested and banned from the stadium for many years. Therefore, these hooligans almost do not dare to cause trouble in the stands, but at most they only dare to fight on the way home!