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English soccer fans rioted yesterday.

People’s faces were messed up, hundreds of beer bottles were broken and crooked, yellowing teeth littered the ground. None of these things had anything to do with the soccer riot. That’s just London on a Tuesday.

I could write, were I so inclined, about the emotional intensity of “big” games, and how it brings out the worst in fans. We could all pretend that this mayhem was the result of a hard-fought match that was decided by a controversial play in extra time and those passionate, crude-but-lovable fans just couldn’t accept the result.

But let’s be real. It’s soccer. These fans are poor and mostly unemployed; they’re drunk and disorderly and miserable and it’s probably raining — and all they want is an exciting sporting event to take their mind off their troubles. And somehow, instead of that, they ended up at a soccer match.

It’s long been a theory of mine — and this just solidifies my beliefs — that the amount of fan violence is inversely proportional to the excitement level of the sport they’re watching.

Fans don’t riot after hockey games. Even in Detroit. Because the game is so exciting they’re all too emotionally drained to burn cars and fight cops. And if you can’t burn cars and fight cops in Detroit, you know you’re exhausted.

Fans don’t riot during basketball games, unless they’re forced to watch the early 2000’s Detroit Pistons, which were possibly the most boring team to win a championship that wasn’t based out of New Jersey.

Fans don’t riot during baseball games, either. But I personally think that’s because barely anyone even goes to baseball games anymore.

This theory also goes a long way towards explaining how the Tiger Woods era finally brought an end to golf’s long history of bloody conflict.

Okay, so maybe not. But still, when the fights afterwards are more entertaining than the game itself … your sport has a problem.

This is why soccer should take a cue from hockey and allow the players to fight during the game — perhaps then the scores could be settled on the field and the fans could perhaps refrain from destroying the city after the match.

We are, of course, assuming that British soccer fans would not promptly find another reason to destroy the city.

You see, this is what happens when empires become impotent. They turn inward, looking for new frontiers to conquer … and find nothing but immigrants, police or fans of a rival sporting organization.

Now this is all in good fun, I admit. I know for a fact that there are some pleasant and sane sports fans in London. These fans gather together on a regular basis to watch the match, appreciate the excitement of a fine contest, well-played and down copious pints of some of the most delicious beers the world has to offer.

You can find them at the Maple Leaf pub in Covent Garden on Saturday night around midnight, drinking Sleeman’s and hoping fervently but futilely that the Canadiens can find a way to stop the Red Wings.

On a more serious and slightly profane note, these soccer ‘fans’ can lovingly cradle my nuts. Have some respect for the sport you profess to love and stop giving assholes like me excuses to spend 20 minutes ripping ‘the beautiful game’ to shreds. Every time someone convinces me to give soccer a chance, something like this happens and my scorn for everything about the game reasserts itself.

A soccer player just finished reading this article now, and he’s rolling around on the floor by his computer, looking for the ref to pull out a card.