Sport Club do Recife Takes Creative Step to Prevent Match-Related Violence

Brazilian soccer club Sport Club do Recife has devised a way to decrease violence during match games.

The creative plan, aimed to curb violence among fans during rivalry matches, involves hiring fans' mothers as security guards, Fox News Latino reported. This idea came ahead of the "Clássico dos Clássicos," Sport Club do Recife's match with neighboring Náutico on Sunday.

The "Seguranca Mae" or "Security Moms," a group of about 30 mothers, is trained just like security guards. They were given bright orange vests to wear as they go around the venue. Images of the mothers were also projected on big screens during the game so that rowdy fans would be aware of their presence, the news outlet noted.

"The idea was to make the most fanatical supporters aware and help in some way to bring peace to stadiums," said Aricio Fortes, vice-president of Ogilvy, the PR company that came up with the idea, The Independent quoted.

Fortes added, "At the end of the day, no one wants to fight in front of a mother, especially his own."

This was not the first time that Sport Club do Recife and Ogilvy collaborated, The Guardian noted. The first team-up was in 2013, wherein the PR company organized an award-winning campaign encouraging Sport fans to sign up for organ-donor cards.

According to Fox News Latino, the strategy appeared to be extremely successful. Sport Club do Recife won 1-0 and no one was arrested during the match.

Recife has been known for having violence during matches. The news outlet reports that "gangs from the rival favelas often form groups known as torcidas organizadas." Aggressive rivalries between clubs like Náutico, Sport Club do Recife, and Gremio have led to riots and even death. The U.S. State Department even said that the city in the state of Pernambuco has the highest assault level in the country.

Brazil has 234 soccer-related deaths between 1988 and 2013, Fox News Latino noted.

Paulo Cesar Cunha, president of the Santa Cruz torcida organizada Inferno Coral said that violence "isn't a soccer problem, it's a social problem," according to a report from Soccer Gods. Cunha added that organizadas are often driven by "disputes between gangs from different neighborhoods, and that different factions supporting the same club can often wage bloody war on each other."

Soccer Gods also noted that most strategies to curb violence among Brazilian soccer matches seem to fail. Cunha said that it's because only politicians, the police, and the soccer clubs have meetings to discuss how to resolve the problem.

"The only people they don't invite are the people who truly understand how things work. The organizadas," Cunha explained, as quoted by the news outlet.