ROGUE FANS FOLLOW ENGLAND AS WELL...
AT the end of a depressing week for our game, denials were still being heard. Not just in Bulgaria but in England too.
The reason, I was told, that England supporters sang their own songs over the Bulgarian national anthem in Sofia was because the PA system at the Vasil Levski stadium was so poor that those in the visiting section were unaware it was time to stand quietly for a moment.
This was strange given that, moments earlier, those same supporters had sung along gustily to their own anthem. Maybe the glitch in the system was selective.
Meanwhile, the England fans clashing with police in Prague before kick-off against the Czech Republic were apparently not football supporters at all, just random English folk who happened to be tanked up in town when there was a game on.
Odd, though, that this doesn’t seem to have happened in Japan while the rugby has been on. Or doesn’t happen in Australia when the Ashes are being played. So either football is just unlucky or we still have a small problem with what happens when the England team travel abroad.
I say small because I think, on the whole, it is and it is diminishing too. That in part is down to the FA, the English police and the attitude of the vast majority of fans who travel.
Significant strides have been made.
But the problem remains and those who say otherwise just aren’t looking properly. The security operation in Sofia was good. Those in the official England Supporters Travel Club told of effective, low-visibility local policing and most responded in kind. In the bars and cafes of the Bulgarian capital, during the long hot hours that led up to a 9.45pm local kick- off, there was no bother at all.
It is a shame, then, that some idiots remain. The ones who need weeding out, shaming and for whom excuses should never be made are those who stood in the away end last Monday singing about ‘Ten German Bombers’. And those behaving so unpleasantly in a hotel bar the night before that one former England international — working in the media — changed his plans for a nightcap and headed straight to bed.
These are not things that make the news and in isolation may not appear significant. But they form part of the general aura of occasional unpleasantness that continues to attach itself to the coat-tails of the national team. And why is this important now? Why raise this when Gareth Southgate’s team and most who travelled east to watch represented their country so well? I raise it precisely because it is when the spotlight is shining so brightly on someone else’s flaws and problems that it is so very easy to forget about your own. And, in terms of England and its minority of rogue football fans, this must not happen. Not until the day they decide to stay at home, anyway.