Let the games begin! Two stabbed after World Cup soccer match

From the Toronto Star:

Two brothers were stabbed and slashed with beer bottles following a street brawl during celebrations of Portugal’s World Cup soccer victory today.

[. . .]

Police said the pair had been arguing with a group of men, all who were fans of Portugal, when the fight broke out involving about a dozen people.

[. . .]

The Portuguese in my neighbourhood were tearing up and down Dufferin St today. They were waving flags and honking car horns. They were very aggressive as usual. The newspapers portray this as good clean fun, but when you're not Portuguese, it can feel like you're in a foreign country. I can't speak for anyone else but I don't I'm think alone in feeling this way. Maybe it was my imagination, but I saw a lot of glum-looking non-Portuguese people standing around. I counted seven large Portuguese flags on my small section of the street alone. That's on houses. I couldn't count the number on cars.

Who would my neighbours be cheering for if Canada were playing Portugal? The CBC recently did a report showing how people in Toronto were all cheering for teams representing the old country because, the reporter said, Canada didn't have a team in the tournament. Yeah, right. My neighbours would be cheering for Portural regardless. Several years ago, Croatian fans booed the Canadian basketball team when it was playing Croatia.

Many of my neighbours are not Canadian. They don't want to be Canadian. They came here to make money. Period. They have made no effort to learn English or to integrate into Canadian society. I live in an ethnically-mixed neighbourhood, but my Portuguese neighbours live in their own little world. It's not just the Portuguese, but they happen to be a prominent group in my part of the city.

What about the children? They are bilingual, but generally speak English better than Portuguese. I say that, because I hear them answer in English when their parents talk to them in Portuguese. But those English-speaking children are waving Portuguese flags.

A while back the Toronto Star published a sob article about some illegal immigrants who had been deported to Portugal after living for years in Canada. In the article, the children complained that they didn't feel at home in Portugal. Maybe not, but I bet you, if they were still in Toronto, they would be waving a Portuguese flag, even if Portugal were playing Canada.