The attack on the Man City bus by a few Liverpool fans before yesterday’s Champions League game was a media induced self-fulfilling prophecy.
First things first: The physical attack on the Man City bus (bottles, spitting etc.) is deplorable and those who are found guilty should receive heavy punishment from the club and from the legal authorities. No one I’ve seen, heard or read is saying otherwise.
It is also worth pointing out that it was a small minority. It always is. While that does not make it any less reprehensible it is not something specific to Liverpool fans. There are idiots in every fanbase. We all know them. There is no point defending them just because they support the same football team as you.
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A bus attack like this has not happened before and I hope it does not happen again. So why did it happen last night? The click-baiting media goaded it into existence.
Liverpool fans had been talking about greeting the buses with chants and pyros since the draw was announced. This is not unusual. We don’t do it for Stoke at 12:30pm on a Saturday but a big European game? Yeah, not unusual.
The media got wind of this and promoted it as a threat: the first click bait story. Man City fans complained to the police and started being cocky online about the Anfield ‘atmosphere’; another story for the press.
The banter, taunting and promise of low-level violence emphasized by the media then draws out the small minority of rotten apples to attend an event they would have no other interest in. Then the inevitable happens and the media get their jackpot hooligan story to grace their pages and illicit those precious clicks. What chance that there is some form of retaliation in the second leg? More juicy money for the tabloids and their websites.
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Is the media to blame for this? No, that lies solely on the heads of those who carried out the attacks. Does the media have any responsibility to calm a situation down by what and how they report news? Absolutely. But they won’t take that moral responsibility as a hot story is better for sales.