FOOTBALL, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Report must be a turning point for the game

BY

BARONESS LOUISE CASEY delivered a 129-page wake-up call to English football fans that she said had to be a “turning point” for future behaviour.

The cross-party peer’s report made a point of making no scapegoats for the mayhem that surrounded the Euro 2020 final at Wembley, but wanted it instead to be a blueprint for a better way forward.

“If we are a country that can’t get a grip of our fans, then we have a problem,” she said.

“The bottom line is that type of criminal behaviour hasn’t gone away...i think that’s the main thing that has to be tackled here.

“Why is it acceptable for footballers to receive racist chants by their own countrymen? What is going on in this country?

“Mass thuggery. Drinking from nine in the morning, urinating all over the place, throwing faeces at stewards. We have a problem and we need to sort it out.

“I’ve seen too much CCTV footage to take this one calmly. We have to understand why it happened and get a grip on that.

“There’s something about our national game that’s a vehicle for thuggery, hooliganism and racism. I would like to see Euro Sunday as a turning point that were we ever to win the World Cup bid, we would never see things like that again.”

At a presentation to support her independent report commissioned by the FA in the aftermath of the violence on July 11, images were shown of some of the 20 “life-threatening” incidents identified in and around Wembley that day. A boy in a T-shirt suffering from a seizure was pulled from a stampeding crush of fans.

A quick-thinking steward caught an innocent ticketholder, cradling a small child as he was bundled over by drunken fans attempting to force their way through a fire exit in a bid to get into the game without tickets.

Steel barriers were ripped up and used as makeshift trampolines, with fans threatening to throw the barriers into the crowd until persuaded not to.

Perhaps the most ghoulish incident was detailed in the report itself - a man putting on a high-visibility jacket and kidnapping a boy in a wheelchair from his dad to get in through a disabled access.

Other wheelchair users were bundled over as fans shamefully targeted disabled entrances to force entry.

Outside the stadium, passengers had to be locked inside a double decker bus for their own safety while supporters clambered over the outside of the vehicle. “I witnessed bottles and cans being thrown at people, children cowering behind parents to hide, trees being ripped up and thrown, climbing on roofs and throwing things into the crowds,” wrote one survey respondent.

Why, though?

The authorities were guilty of “collective failings” in letting this all go on unchecked and fans up and down the country can expect a clampdown on antisocial behaviour going forward.

Baroness Casey (top left) also demanded the FA lead a national campaign to effect a “sea-change in attitudes” among football fans.