Ultras-culture takes a bow in the sleepy streets of Töölö

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By Riku Jokinen
     
      Continental football culture made a rather noisy landfall on Saturday evening in the sleepy streets of Helsinki's Töölö district.
      It set out in five coaches from that cradle of civilisation Turku, had a refuelling pit-stop at Suomusjärvi along the way, and burst into full flower outside the Finnair Stadium in Töölö in the wake of the match played there between two local Turku sides, TPS and FC Inter.
     
After the game, which Inter won 1-0 to take the League Cup trophy and get their season off to a promising start, several dozen disgruntled TPS fans stood around outside the ground, looking for something to take out their frustrations on.
      A few of them tried to attack two members of the Ultraboyz club, supporters of FC Inter.
      Police patrols leapt into action. Firework bombs were thrown in the air, and the acrid smell of pepper spray spread around as the officers calmed things down.
      Two people were arrested and released on Sunday.
     
"Huh?" I hear you say. Ultraboyz? Who are they when they are at home?
      The supporters' clubs of Finnish teams have in recent years tried to bring a new lease of life to the normally moribund grandstands at football and ice hockey matches.
      Traditionally, one has sat on one's hands at football matches, muttering occasionally to any idiot who might ruin one's train of thought and the diligent reading of the game by doing something as silly as beating a samba drum.
     
But now the fan groupings have declared they are bringing the Ultras culture to Finland, which includes attending as many games as humanly possible, home and away, dressing in the club's colours, wearing and waving scarves, standing throughout (stadiums here are generally all-seater), singing even when you are not winning, lighting [illegal] flares, carrying banners, and orchestrating impressive bits of mass choreography.
      The models for the Ultras and ultra-culture come from Italy.
      This even shows up in the language used.
      Items of terrace choreography, such as mosaics or giant flags, are known as tifos, the home fans' stand behind the goal is kurvi (from "curva"), and the gang-boss running the show is the capo.
     
Names of club hardcore fan groups include "Ultras Jokerit", "Ultraboyz", "Ultras 06" (from Vaasa), "Forza HJK", and "Brigata Giallorossa 103", who are another Helsinki Jokerit grouping, occupying Block 103 in the Hartwall Arena, behind the goal.
      The oldest Italian Ultra firms still in operation were founded back in the 1960s.
      From there things spread elsewhere in Europe and to South America by the 1980s at the latest.
      The most visible aspect of their support is in the form of grandstand choreographies produced with flares, confetti, smoke bombs, and giant flags or banners, in which entire sections of the crowd take part, often before and even during a game.
      TV viewers of course will also recognise the giant painted banners, often containing the name of the particular group, that are taped to the front walls of sections of the stadium.
     
Some of the members are more geared to looking for trouble than watching the match, and pick fights and set off firework rockets in the general direction of the police and the opposing fans.
      Ultras groups are generally seen to be of an extreme right-wing persuasion, but this can be misleading: there can just as easily be extreme leftist ultras and politically neutral groups.
      Ultras are also a business opportunity. Fan-clubs have shops that sell fanwear and other gear and also deal in black market tickets.
      And there are even companies that specialise in supplying the necessary smoke flares, flags, and giant banners. The Finnish Ultra groups often tend to buy their apparel and equipment from Italy.
     
In the Finnish experience, these groups of fans generally only come to wider public attention through incidents such as that on Saturday evening or when someone sets off an illegal flare in the stands.
      The most jittery of social commentators are already asking whether the loud ultras-culture now arriving at Finnish grounds is a prelude to football rioting.
      One can always have worries on this score, but there is no cause for exaggeration. Saturday's scuffles can probably be put down more to the traditional stupidity that comes with getting legless.
      During the "Töölö football fracas", one police officer had his fluorescent overalls torn, and two drunks were shoved into the cells to cool off.
      It was all over very quickly.
      Some of the police called in were still trying desperately to remember where they had left their batons and crowd control tunics after the Smash Asem demonstration in 2006 by the time the buses were already on the motorway back to Turku.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.4.2008


Links:
  Ultras (Wikipedia)
  Tifo (Wikipedia)
  Ultras Jokerit
  Brigata Giallorossa 103
  The Finns still have some way to go... Youtube, Liverpool-Chelsea, Champions League, May 2005

RIKU JOKINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
riku.jokinen@hs.fi