HOW WEMBLEY’S GREAT DAY TURNED INTO A NIGHTMARE OF BOOZE, DRUGS, VIOLENCE, FEAR & FERAL BEHAVIOUR

Euros final should have been a day of celebration but turned into a lawless day of shame for English football

FIVE months on, I can remember the smell. Five months on, I can remember the sight. Five months on, I can remember the sound.

The smell? Weed, dope, cannabis, call it what you want. Wembley Stadium reeked of drugs.

The sight? Grown men, eyes rolling into the backs of their heads, shouting abuse, rushing at stewards, urinating in front of families on the streets.

The sound? Swathes of staggering youths, bellowing like banshees.

Those are just some of the sensory recollections of that dark, violent day.

There are many more.

The crunching of broken glass under foot, the sight of so many people brazenly snorting cocaine, the fear tattooed on to the faces of well-behaved citizens who were being terrorised by youths who had lost their responsible minds… if they ever had such things.

For an 8pm kick-off on July 11, I arrived at Wembley at 3pm for the Euro 2020 final, which, it now turns out, was the time 500 or so police officers were taking up duty.

The bevvied beast had long since bolted. By then, the stadium surroundings were shrouded with the senseless.

Listening to the build-up on my drive down, you began to get an idea of what one of the biggest days in the history of English sport had also become.

A World Cup final for the bingedrinkers, a World Cup final for coke-heads, a World Cup final for thugs, a World Cup final for the feral.

And pretty much from the moment I stepped from my car and walked through the stoned and drunken chaos, it was clear what the occasion had become.

Quite simply, it was lawless – that is my overriding, simple recollection.

And that, as the report by Baroness Louise Casey makes clear, can never be allowed to happen again.

Once inside the dope-filled stadium, some scenes were almost as anarchic.

Looking down from our media area, hordes of people – mainly young men, it has to be said – swarmed towards seats that were already taken.

Families were intimidated and fled. Some intruders got to their seats first and would then threaten ticket-holders who tried to, rightfully, remove them.

The stewards had given up, the Old Bill nowhere to be seen.

Hands up here. I did not see it coming. I did not smell it coming. I did not hear it coming.

Yet, according to the report, others did. Others in the type of authority that should have planned and reacted better.

The FA and the police have to shoulder blame.

It cannot be allowed to happen again.

But I remember walking away from Wembley in the early hours of Monday morning – the place one giant, deserted, urban battlefield, stained with vomit, strewn with debris – and wondering if everyone had got home OK.

“I am clear that we were close to fatalities and/or life-changing injuries,” said Baroness Casey. Thankfully, only ‘close to’.

For those of us who witnessed the scenes, we know how lucky that was.

But if there is ever a next time, we will not be so fortunate.

‘Families were intimidated and fled. The stewards had given up, the Old Bill nowhere to be seen.’