Last night's Carling Cup match between West Ham and Millwall ended with hundreds of fans storming the pitch at West Ham's stadium, dozens of arrests, people throwing bricks and bottles in the streets outside, and one fan getting stabbed in the chest. (He survived.) The brawls began in the streets before the game even started, carried on both in and outside the stadium during play, and then ended with fans taking over the field in the final minutes ... before being ushered outside for more fighting with police.

For some of these goons, the fighting—and not the soccer—is what they live for. "Nights like last night make me want to go back to Upton Park more regularly... the passion and atmosphere," said one. Not only were fans proud of the mayhem they created, they were planning on it all along. Online message boards were filled with pre-match warnings like, "Make sure you bring your bats and don't bring your kids," which led to a heavy police presence at the stadium, which only encouraged the goofballs even more. And, of course, they immediately went back online to gloat over their performance.

One wrote on Millwall Online under the headline 'Someone stabbed': "Let's just pray that whoever it is pulls through ok.. unless they're a West Ham c**t, then let them die."

Charming, as always.

Man is stabbed as West Ham and Millwall fans brawl outside stadium [Daily Mail]
West Ham v Millwall: the hooligans are back [Who Ate All The Pies]

The sports heckler is really just a close ancestor to another unfortunate phenomenon of modern life—the Internet Tough Guy. Go to any sporting event, from NFL playoff games to little league softball, and you will regularly hear unbelievably vile epithets hurled at anyone standing between the lines. (And not just in Philadelphia!) You know, the kind of things you would never say in front of your mother. But if asked to back up their raging threats, most folks immediately back down like the cowards they are.

Like this guy:

Video blogger Ramsey Mohsen was at the Kansas City game and right on top of the action when Beckham had his little showdown with the fans. (You should really watch the whole video, but I grabbed this snippet just to make my point.) One of them, wearing an England kit, insulted the player's wife so Beckham told him he had no business wearing that jersey. (And maybe called him a scumbag later.) The other guy dared Beckham to call him down to the field if he thinks he's so strong. So Beckham did call him down ... and the guy, of course, did not answer the challenge. That didn't stop him from trying to brag about it on video anyway. Well played, sir.

The safety of the bleachers allows fans to shout terrible things that they would never, ever say to another person's face. (Just like I'm doing now, maybe!) The L.A. Galaxy fan who leapt on the field actually tried to back his talk up, which is why it's sort of fitting that his lifetime ban from the arena was lifted. Congrats on not being a coward! On the other hand, Beckham would have never pulled that crap in Europe, because he would probably be stabbed in the heart with a burning road flare. They don't mess around on the continent.

I'm not saying taunts shouldn't be allowed at games, or that you should go charging on to the field at the first sign of a challenge. I'm just asking fans to take a little more pride in their trash talk. Be clever. Be amusing. For real amusing, not just internet comment amusing. Making a player laugh would be way more distracting than making them angry. There's no need to be cruel/offensive/racist. Most of all, don't make threats. Because you know you can't back them up. If you said those things to David Beckham on the street, he and/or his security guard would pummel you into the concrete. But it doesn't make you a hero to say it to him from behind the safety of the railing.

Unless you're these guys. They walked the walk, they can talk the talk.

Beckham Fan Incident Explained [Hillcrest Road]

But don't fear, metropolitan Denver residents. Your local television station is here to tell you how to feel about this unfortunate public crime:

9NEWS doesn't condone the defacing of public property, but we do appreciate the sentiment displayed on stop signs in Denver's Baker neighborhood.

Who doesn't?

'Kobe stop crying' signs pop up on Denver streets [9NEWS]

*****

That's a wrap for today. I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with some more substance, and we'll do this whole thing again. Thanks for your continued support of Deadspin, and for not hiding when the new guy showcases his ineptitude.

Stephen Wells—nice name, jerk!—comes from England, the birthplace of soccer riots. These people will shiv you in the back just for wearing the wrong scarf to nil-nil friendly, but somehow he thinks we're the ones with the problem. Even racist Spaniards think the British take things a bit too seriously.

Honestly, where does this guy get off? Yes, occasionally, things can get a little heated out in the bleachers. But it's all in good fun. Yankee and Red Sox fans may profess a mutual hatred that rivals most Mid-Eastern land disputes, but they know that it's all part of the game and they never take it too far. Except for that guy that ran over a Sox fan with his car because he shouted "Yankees Suck." Or the family that was pulled from their vehicle and hit with baseball bats simply because they had New York license plates. But that rarely happens.

The list of "incidents" this guy makes up is ridiculous. Yes, Boston, Philadelphia and L.A. all experienced riots after their teams won (or lost) championships this year, but was that just an excess of community spirit. It's not like they were targeting opposing fans. (Except for the Celtics fans who were targeted.) And yes, Montreal backers nearly burned down their city after a playoff win last spring, but guess what? That's in Canada! Which used to be British! Shows what you know!

Maybe the occassional youth event gets called off because of fighting parents, and pepper spray and tasers are standard issue for most stadium security guards, and a few nine-year-olds got beer poured on them at the World Series, and Wells didn't even mention all the people in Alabama who get shot over Crimson Tide football games—but those pond jumpers are way worse than us. I mean, the people that got beat up at that Columbus Crew game? They were from West Ham! That's English! And they were watching soccer, so what do you expect?

However, I do agree with him on one point. Fans who get angry enough to start fights at a bicycle race? Those people are fucking nuts.

Does Europe really have a bigger hooligan problem than America? [The Guardian]

FC Lokomotive Leipzig has a pretty proud history, but the club fell on hard times and went bankrupt in 2004. A group of fans re-established the team, started at the bottom, and they currently find themselves playing in the 7th tier of German football, to which the American equivalent would be... well... we don't really have one. Maybe your company's softball team, or a women's professional football team.

Fortunately, the weaponry of the fanbase reflects their current place in German football. A lot of cops were injured, mostly by cobblestones and concrete blocks. The club has condemned the violence on their website Courtesy of FreeTranslation.com:

The 1st FC locomotive Leipzig convicted the bad occurrences after the country cup-game against meadow II and dissociates itself on the sharpest of these so named "fans"!

If only any of those so-named "fans" could read.

UPDATE 1-Hooligans battle police at cup match in Germany [Reuters]

You can probably guess what happened next: The crowd rushed the stage and starting beating the piss out of the band. The video shows the guitarist taking a particularly brutal shot to the head.

This is nothing new to American sports, of course; who can forget the time G.W.A.R. showed up at Yankee Stadium and started up a rousing rendition of "Sweet Caroline?" We thought they'd never sneak Sleazy P. Martini out of that place alive.

Hello Cleveland! [CourtTV]

The culprit? The English. Their motivation? Evidently, German happiness. In one instance, German fans were celebrating their own win and singing their celebratory songs when some chairs and bottles began raining down on them. In the same area earlier in the day, 122 English fans were arrested for throwing bottles at people walking by. 122 people. That's a lot of bottles.

Still, considering all the hooligan fears that were prevalent before the World Cup started, things are going pretty well. According to a British official of some kind, this wasn't even a hooligan incident. Hell, it might have even been a good thing:

"You will not see any English hooligans here in Stuttgart - what you will see is English drunks. I apologize now for that, but it is very good for the economy."

So yeah, you might get hit in the head with a bottle, but hey, at least that bottle was purchased at a local German pub. Those stitches are a small price to pay for economic growth.

English soccer fans disturbance halted [Yahoo! News]
Police Arrest 122 English Soccer Fans [Forbes.com]

• America's first opponent in the World Cup, the Czech Republic, hammered Trinidad & Tobago earlier today. Jan Koller had two goals and assisted on a third. Now would be a good time to start working up that lather of hatred from Jan Koller. Just for comparison's sake, the last two times the United States has played T&T, they've won 2-1, and 1-0.

• England's manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, has named Peter Crouch as a starter for England's opening game against Paraguay. And it makes sense, considering that Crouch had a hat trick today in England's final warm-up, a 6-0 ghetto-stomping of Jamaica. Michael Owen also had a goal in his first full 90 minute game of the year. And we've still got quite a ways to go to heal Wayne Rooney's foot.

• And, finally, your hooliganism update: The Germans want to beat the hell out of the Poles. Last November, when the two teams played a friendly, 46 Polish hooligans took on 38 German hooligans, and the Poles just whooped some ass. And, as bad of a person as it makes me, if the rematch was televised, I'd watch it, and if Vegas had odds on it, I'd put some money down on the Poles. I hope there's at least a reporter there to tell us who wins.