Half-naked, paralytic, leering at women, taking over a town square like an occupying army – that’s why England fans terrify the world
The local man shook his head, bemused, saddened. ‘It is strange,’ he said, his english faltering, hesitant. ‘The english, sur mer, en vacation — they are the best. But this is…’
he trailed off, too polite to finish the sentence. No need. It was obvious the direction he was heading. The worst? Well, not exactly.
There are, as we now know, worse out there; sinister, organised gangs of ruthless, blackshirted Russians, indiscriminate in their terrorising aggression and supported by domestic lickspittles in the media and government.
They were the ones who brought explosives into the stadium, they were the ones who, on what appeared to be the given signal of a launched flare, invaded a section of england fans and administered random beatings. They came equipped with mixed martial arts frippery, gumshields and something approaching uniform.
Yet, just because we have met and suffered the new hooliganism, does not mean we should remain blind to our ancient own, revisited in an old stamping ground on a blighted long weekend.
There is a terrace song that sums up english attitudes abroad; it is a deeply unpleasant one, and heard most regularly as a taunt from the away section at Anfield. We won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say it cannot always be the French police, the local population, or the Russians that are out for trouble in Marseille.
Tear gas is not being randomly fired into other groups of supporters in France, and it will be interesting to see if visitors from Albania, Iceland, hungary, Ukraine and Poland find the Marseillais youth as dangerously unwelcoming.
More than 20 years ago, a veteran football reporter identified the perception problem with english football. ‘If nobody’s dead, we think we’ve behaved all right,’ he said.
In other words, being half-naked, paralytic, shouting, swearing, aggressive, leering at women, taking over a town square in the manner of an occupying army, it all becomes an acceptable part of supporting the team. Nobody ever stops to consider the fear it brings to countries that do not have this boorish, loud drinking culture. It terrifies them. It repulses them. It threatens them. That is why the english become a target. They present a challenge.
And, yes, it is a football match, not a cultural tour, but to see a historic town square covered in St George flags, overwhelmed with chanting england fans, the locals keeping a nervous distance, is to witness obvious tension and clash of cultures.
We think we’re harmless. We don’t look harmless. We look like the sort of people you would cross the street to avoid — or cross it to fight, if you were otherwise wired.
A French woman was arrested on Friday for throwing bottles. It transpires she became enraged when english fans tried to steal her tricolour flag. They were only having a laugh; except it wasn’t a laugh to her. It was an affront, an outrage. Just mind your own business. Top bantz, mate.
And yes, by the looks of it, many innocent england fans were inadvertently caught up in some pretty horrific violence on Saturday, particularly in the stadium, but it is disingenuous to act as if this country sent 35,000 lambs to the port of Marseille this weekend.
The footage is readily available, its similarity to historic incidents too great. The Football Association were mealy-mouthed about it on Saturday, but UEFA cut through the blather yesterday. They charged Russia, rightly, over the behaviour in the Stade Velodrome, but warned both countries that any repeat could lead to expulsion from the tournament.
This is close to unprecedented in recent years. UEFA do not usually pass sanction on anti-social behaviour away from the venue. Not since 2000, when incidents in Charleroi and Brussels came close to sending england home, has such a threat been made. And it took a lot longer for UEFA to act back then.
The world has changed since. The French police have to keep a watchful eye for mass murderers; they cannot get distracted by chair-chuckers or moronic copycats. German and Ukrainian fans were fighting in Lille last night, it was reported.
Of course, what won’t happen — but should — is that a review of tournament planning follows. The French Gendarmerie National were given no say in the timing or location of any powderkeg fixtures. UEFA have a schedule and insist on it being adhered to as the names come out of a hat, no matter how great the logistical challenge, or how incongruous the location.
ON Wednesday, June 22, for instance, France’s 81,000- capacity national stadium will host Iceland v Austria as its last match in the group stage. Iceland were F2 in the draw, Austria F3 and as the schedule had already been organised so that F2 played F3 in the mighty Stade de France, that could not change.
Quite why any organiser would choose to arrange a match there that did not include one of the better supported top seeds is a question best directed to UEFA. This is their show, bloody carnage and all, they create the pairings and random is how they like it.
In 2000, the biggest match of the group stages — england v Germany — was dispatched on the same basis to Charleroi, the smallest ground in the smallest host city, and violence and chaos ensued.
Surveying what remains of the port of Marseille this morning, with many in hospital,
even fighting for life, we should rightly ask what UEFA have learned in those intervening years. Not much, evidence suggests.
The world has changed, but football refuses to change with it, and the additional disgrace of Marseille is that it was all so avoidable. The spreadsheet said that A2 would play A3 at 9pm on Saturday, but when A2 turned out to be England and A3 Russia, UEFA should have envisaged the product and revised accordingly.
Marseille? Where England fans rioted in 1998 and fought with local immigrant youths? A melting pot city with close to a quarter of its inhabitants born outside France? Post 9/11? At a time of a shift to the right in Britain and in Europe? With Russia’s notorious racist hooligans? In hot weather with a 9pm kick- off, made for all- day drinking? On a day when tens of thousands will be able to travel? Of course, UEFA should have stepped in.
The draw should always be subject to logistical review and adjustment. Not the actual names out of the hat, but the details — venues, kick- off times. Is it safe? Is it feasible? Is it the best solution?
UEFA’s overpaid suits need to work harder. It is not too late, in December, to address plans in June. The location of baseball’s World Series is sometimes only known 48 hours in advance. At the Rugby World Cup in 2011, two quarter-finals and five pool matches were supposed to be played in Christchurch until an earthquake hit. All were successfully relocated.
Draws do not have to be fixed or teams kept apart. England would still play Russia, but perhaps at a different time or in a different city, one that did not quickly transform into a war zone.
England’s next fixture is in Lens on Thursday, against Wales — another game that could sell out an 81,000 stadium — but the random factor has put it at the tournament’s third smallest venue instead. Worse, because Lens is by some distance the tiniest Euro 2016 location — the 240th biggest town in France, meaning its British equivalent would be Tipton in the West Midlands — England’s fans have been advised to stay at a larger conurbation nearby — Lille.
And who is playing Slovakia in Lille the day before the match between England and Wales? Russia. Maybe it would have taken a problem- solver with real foresight to anticipate that, but it would not have required the greatest brain to have concluded that Lens would struggle to accommodate a crowd of any significance.
Better to take the tournament to a larger city, such as Nantes or Montpelier, or simply to switch: Iceland v Austria in Lens, England v Wales in Paris. Now the continuance of the tournament in its present format is at stake — if we believe UEFA’s threat to expel England and the hosts of the next World Cup if trouble engulfs Lille. In many ways, England’s metaphoric survival is insignificant when, for some individuals, literal survival is at stake. Too much is being left to chance, too many gambles taken on the downside being inconvenience, not tragedy.
Thought is going into the wrong areas: to commerce, to branding, to creating ever more circuitous routes into the stadium and making sure nobody carries anything bar the sponsors’ water when they visit.
For the media, there is now not just a ticket for the match, but for the pre-match press conference, the post-match press conference, the access to players after the game, layer upon layer of unnecessary bureaucracy.
Questioners have to first state their name and organisation so that, yesterday, we had the idiot noise of UEFA’s moderator asking ‘John Murray of the BBC’ for his question, but then requiring him to say ‘John Murray of the BBC’ before he asked it.
All of these rules require meetings, UEFA officials convening in offices while Marseille burns again.
In Nice yesterday, the Polish flags proudly displayed the home towns of the travelling supporters. Prokocim, Zmigrod, Paris — and Bognor Regis. More than ever, the people of Europe are in it together.
So one final thought. You cannot lead a very powerful and lowest common denominator election campaign, based on demonising immigrants and the very concept of immigration; on making the claim that Britain is somehow different from the vague foreign mass; on telling us that we are not the same, that we are somehow better; that we have nothing in common with people who live across a tiny strip of water; that we should put up walls, restraints, that they are the reason for our failing NHS and myriad social ills. You cannot do this without also creating a dangerous, divided climate, in which hatred festers. English hooliganism never went away, but it has not been as identifiable and vocal for some time.
Long before the Russians showed the sinister, orchestrated face of the new football violence, drunken English fans were gathering to sing anti-European songs in Marseille’s port.
You reap what you sow. Craven politicians have, in part, sown this. They know who they are.
We look like the sort of people you would cross the street to avoid