We arrive at the bar, Anders in the shirt with the club crest, I with the scarf with the colors. ”Unfortunately I can’t serve you”, says the bartender. ”You may take the of you the there first.”
About a couple weeks start to the Swedish Allsvenskan. The cup is already underway. It is the second visit to the bar where we go before the matches. But now it’s stop.
”There’s too much crap. Last weekend there was a fight with knives and stuff,” says the bartender. ”We found the drugs between the cushions of the couch. Now we have decided: no more catering to football fans.”
When Anders and I discuss it all, and afterwards when I retell it, I use the appropriate avsmaksmarkörerna. ”It is awful. The violence in football… Bloody hell! They ruin it for normal fans.”
It is not honest. A part of me rubs hands and thinks: ”Cool! Run hard!”
and soon, more than middle-aged. I collect his bowler hat, for seventeen men. I use the expression ”for seventeen old men”. My våldskapital is not only low, it is in a long-end value, as a tiokronorssedel. How many chances I have to appear to be a little hard, a little dangerous?
Football gives me the chance. The violence is always there, under the surface, in chants, in body language, in expression. I am good at taking measurements, outwards. In fact, it is part of what draws me there.
If you found a miraculous way to get the violence to disappear, as when one purifies the water from the cholera bacteria – could I even continue to go?
Erik Helmerson is an editorial writer and Swedish champion in soccer. He needs a new bar.
