Nationalism or Fanatical Fanhood in the UK?

Since you ask for do's and don'ts, and I don't think anybody has said this in the answers so far:

It is unfortunately true in the UK, that it's probably safest not to wear team clothing for a team you don't know much about.

The simple reason is that if it just so happens to be a match day, or if the team has recently done something notable, or if you're in an area frequented by fans of a rival team, then some people will react to it. Some reactions will be negative, and some of those will be extreme. If you don't actually follow the team then you're gambling blind. If you know a bit about the team, you can judge when these less safe times and places are, and you can respond to any reactions in a way that makes sense from the football fan's POV (mind you, in the particular case of being told to throw your hat away, there's no response that makes particular football sense other than to start running sooner rather than later).

There are some pubs in London and elsewhere that ban team colours on match days. This is not because of anything to do with racism or nationalism. It's because some football supporters are prone to violence or trouble-making, and some supporters who aren't normally prone to those things get carried away when it comes to football. The pub doesn't want a lot of drunk people carrying on like that. The problem is to do with football, not race.

Furthermore, some fans object to people who aren't "proper" fans wearing team gear or otherwise giving the appearance of supporting a team "improperly". You would have thought that folks would get used to ManU being a global brand, but apparently not always. It's rare that a reaction would be anything like as extreme as the one you describe, and I wouldn't expect that to happen to very many people, but it doesn't surprise me in the least that it has happened to someone. I'm certain that there have been worse cases from time to time.

It's not as bad as wearing gang colours in the wrong part of LA, but it's the same type of "mistake". You have the legal and moral right to do it, but it's not advisable because certain people will react to it criminally. That's what happened in your friend's case. Even short of crime, if you pass a group of a rival team's supporters you half-expect to be shouted at, which can be intimidating if you don't know what it's all about. Or even if you do.

I don't want to blame the victim -- your friend was not at fault. The large majority of British people wouldn't support what happened. Football fans might get in your face, but will not normally attack you or take your stuff, or agree with other people doing so. However, the behaviour of the unpleasant minority is well known and yet difficult to wholly prevent.

I don't think this has much to do with nationalism or racism, other than that some people will come to the conclusion that you're not a "proper" supporter of a British club, or that you're fair game to be targeted, faster for an Indian than a white Briton. It would be nice to say that British football supporters are no more racist than the average population, and it might even be true, but I'm pretty sure that those who are racist are more likely to express racism loudly or in a physically intimidating way in the context of football. You hear racist chants at matches, or where fans are gathered before or after matches, and it simply wouldn't occur to the same people to chant those things if they were walking down the street together in a non-football context. It's slowly improving, and this is not a problem specific to the UK alone or football alone, but it's something visitors should be aware of if they're going to dabble in football while they're here.

So in short: the incident may well have been "racially aggravated" (in the legal sense of having been more severe or more likely to occur due to racism on the part of the perpetrator), but the root problem there isn't racism or nationalism. It's people being total jerks about sport.

In fact, based on what you say of the incident, it might not even be football-related. We know your friend's hat was stolen, and we don't know why. Might be football, might be racism, might be both or neither.

However, as far as advice on football, I would say the same thing: regardless of race, if you wear team gear then some people will react to it, and some of those people are nasty. You can encounter nasty people through pure bad luck, but doing so when wearing a hat for a team they particularly like or dislike is especially bad luck.

By the way, I've sort of assumed your friend doesn't know much about ManU. This might be incorrect, but you did say "Manchester United or some other famous football club", and you didn't say, "my friend, who has supported ManU avidly since birth". So I'm claiming fair assumption ;-)

That's neither nationalism nor racism, it's just fanatical fanhood for (or against, which is often the same thing) a specific sports club. And yes, that's common in the UK when it comes to football, just like it is in many other European countries.

If you're from say the US, it's somewhat similar when it comes to baseball or American football. Though your average fan of one team there might not threaten physical violence against a fan of another team, can you rule it out?

Like it or not, people are passionate about their sports and especially their favourite teams, and some people take that to the extreme of literally attacking and destroying the symbols of (certain) opposing teams. It's so bad that in many European cities they won't allow visiting fan clubs from opposing cities to enter the city at match time, the fans being shipped in in locked trains and buses under police escort directly to the stadium, and back home again the same way. Anything less controlled is a recipe for riots and wanton destruction, sadly.

Just to make this clear: This has nothing to do with nationalism or being a fan of some football club. It has only to do with some idiot trying to make himself feel big and strong by threatening a 15 year old child. People going to football matches and then getting into fights don't get into fights because they are fans of some football club, they get into fights because they want to get into a fight.

I'm sure your friend didn't have any intention to offend anyone. The person he met, on the other hand, had every intention to be offended about anything that gave him an excuse to be offended. He would have been enormously offended by you calling him a "gentleman", because his intention was to be offended.

And there is no need for you to apologise for anything. Seriously. The only thing your friend could have done better would have been to run away as quick as possible, and perhaps contact the police. But that's not something that you could expect a 15 year old in a foreign country to know.

To address the travel aspect a bit more directly, there are some places in Europe that have a bad reputation and some members of my family faced racist insults on the street based solely on the color of their skin. But it's difficult to assess precisely how safe or dangerous a particular place is and whether an incident is a case of bad luck or evidence of a deeper problem.

I don't think it's fair to just write this off as an individual event or pretend it's the same everywhere but I wouldn't put London high on the list of places in Europe where I would expect to encounter racism. Unfortunately, I don't think there is much you can do to avoid it, it's not like you provoked or deserved the hostility in any way.

While I wouldn't presume to know exactly what happened in this case, it's also true that football hooliganism is a particularly acute problem in the UK so it might have played a role as well.

Finally, statistically speaking the UK is not among the European countries where alcohol consumption is the highest but my strangest encounters with drunk people happened there (e.g. one guy going from table to table in a restaurant, insisting other patrons should take a piece of a dish he did not finish…). English people certainly have a bad reputation in some of the countries they frequently visit (I am thinking about France and the Netherlands). It's completely anecdotal and possibly itself a bit of a prejudice but it's possible that this played a role too.

Going by your date, this happened in 2007-2008. in 2008, ManU won the Premier League, the Community Shield and the UEFA Champions league. However, they also underperformed in the 2 major English elimination tournaments compared to their other performance. It's possible your friend encountered either a disgruntled ManU supporter, or a disgruntled supporter of an opposing team which was eliminated by ManU. Especially right after a match, such people might not want to be reminded of the performance of their favorite team.