Dortmund bombs changed the game... the police don’t have time for drunken louts
WE have been here countless times before. Too many to mention.
Was it the fault of inherently violent, foreign Old Bill, relishing a ramification-free round of batonwielding practice on jelly-legged Brits?
Or was it the fault of little Englanders, too much San Miguel and sun, behaving with a boorishness that has long been a tanked-up trademark?
There will be conflicting arguments as to why some Leicester fans (above) went from lovable to clubbable.
I wasn’t in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor on Wednesday afternoon and early evening.
I was in a part of the city where there was nothing but good humour, nothing but mutual interest between two sets of supporters relishing the thrill of the occasion.
To watch the social media clips of the behaviour, from police and punters, on the debris-strewn city square was jarring even in its familiarity. What made it more jarring, of course, was that, as a group of shirtless, well-oiled oiks were lustily belting out the Ten German Bombers number, Borussia Dortmund were about to play a football match against Monaco, the day after their coach was targeted by a terrorist attack. If the comparison was made once, it was made a thousand times. German supporters offer rival fans a bed for the night, English supporters sing the Bombers song and abuse the Spanish over Gibraltar. Let’s not forget Germany has had its issues with misbehaving fans, but a valid juxtaposition all the same. And, incidentally, if Leicester supporters deserve censure, it can only be matched by that heaped on UEFA for their scandalous decision to make Dortmund and Monaco play that match so soon after the trauma of Tuesday.
Play it they did and the moving scenes and reports from Dortmund again only put the drunken antics in the Plaza Mayor into sharp perspective.
Condemning what are, at worst, anti-social antics is a given.
That the condemnation will largely be ignored is also a given. The riposte is standard. Those fans, who like to drink to excess and be – at the least offensive end of the scale – boisterous, will say they are spending hard-earned money on their trip and, if they want to get lashed and sing daft songs, then that’s their right.
Authorities, indeed the media, not only get great seats in the house, but do not have to pay a penny for the privilege.
They don’t like being told how to behave, not by journalists, certainly not by a UEFA whose largesse for their own bigwigs at these Champions League games is nauseating.
These are NOT valid excuses for putrid antics, but they are the mindsets of some. How do you change those mindsets? With great difficulty, but if events in Dortmund and last night in Lyon cannot have an effect, nothing can.
The Dortmund incident is a game-changer, make no mistake.
If you didn’t know already, major European football matches have a terrorist’s bullseye on them.
And maybe the last hopeful stab to eradicate the sort of scenes in the Plaza Mayor will be to remind anyone in town for a match that ANY police time taken up by loutish behaviour is time that could be spent combatting the real threat of a terrorist atrocity at a football game YOU are attending.
Or that your friend is attending. Or your friend’s family is attending.
If that doesn’t stop the minority’s misbehaviour, nothing will.