Colombian national team player Jáminton Campaz almost renewed the sad story of his predecessor in the Colombian national team, Andrés Escobar.

Player Campaz missed a chance to score the decisive goal against Switzerland in the current World Cup competitions, and Switzerland qualified at the expense of Colombia.

The Colombian public launched harsh attacks on the player and his family, and threatened to kill him if he came to the country; which made him refrain from returning, and prompted the Colombian Football Federation to issue a statement saying:

“Oh Colombia, I hope we never lose our respect. We may disagree in opinion, or feel frustrated and sad, but no passion justifies hatred or living in fear.”

This man saved his life, but this was not the luck of the poor Andrés Escobar, the Colombian national team player in the 1994 World Cup in America, who scored an own goal during the 1-2 loss to the US team, and days after elimination and the team's return to his country, Escobar was killed in the city of Medellín.

The second case was milder than the Colombian case, which was the attack on the referee of the Egypt vs Argentina match, which ended with an exciting victory in the last minute of the match, by Messi and his teammates.

The referee of the match, who angered the Egyptian public and those with them, was the target of the attack, but the matter developed into searching for his accounts on social media, and a paradox occurred that seemed funny but became gloomy. The details: François Letexier, an 'ordinary' French citizen, underwent a harsh experience, he and his family, at the hands of Egyptian fans, only because his name - unfortunately for him - matches the name of the French referee.

Sophie, the mother of the ordinary citizen Letexier 'the other', said about the attacks by those angry at the French referee on them on social media:

“They wish us to go to hell, and they will search for us until they find us, and things like that. They scare us. It is a very violent situation we are going through, and we were not prepared for it in our rural background... I became a star in Egypt, and I could have done without that.”

These incidents, although they have an old precedent like the Escobar incident in '94, but there is no doubt that the ease of communication and tracking on social media, and the great exposure of everyone to everyone, facilitated access to the target party, and made people's privacy scarce, especially since some or most people are keen to vulgarize themselves and display their lives publicly.

This is one thing, and the second: why do emotions in the game of football reach this sharp level of escalation and seriousness? Indeed, there are cases of death that sometimes occur among fans, either out of joy or out of frustration. Yes, that happens. What is the explanation for this?!

Are these violent emotions found in competitions between clubs and national teams as a substitute for real wars and biases of belonging to sects or tribes?!

I do not know for sure.

Quoted from Asharq Al-Awsat

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