TOXIC CULTURE
Fan abuse dished out to Dier is happening too often
The gawping bystanders with their smartphones are surely the most dismal part of the scene. As someone sagely observed on Wednesday night, Stanley Kubrick did not have that many cameramen for Spartacus.
So this is what we have come to. ‘Supporters’ more interested in the vicarious pleasure of videoing eric Dier going after the individual who has abused him and his brother than actually taking that individual to task.
The faceless, spineless propagator of the Dier hate, panicked by the realisation that the player was actually ready to have it out with him, man-to-man, flees, squealing, for the exit, while those who cannot get close to the drama simply plead with others for a share of the footage. One video clip is punctuated by WhatsApp messages. ‘Send it, please,’ ‘Dolly and I didn’t catch it at all.’
Dier now faces the full force of the FA disciplinary system but how about a judgment that also draws attention to the real scandals at the heart of Wednesday night’s incident?
A football culture which tolerates fans issuing 90 minutes of intermittent bile at a player and getting away with it. And a pitifully poor and underfunded stewarding system which allows that kind of abuse to go unchecked.
Tottenham are actually one of the more effective monitors of fans in the Premier League, with some of the most sophisticated 4D CCTV cameras and staff ready to arrest perpetrators of abuse in the act, because bringing charges after the event is notoriously difficult.
But Wednesday night’s footage hints at the inadequacy of the stewarding provision, too. A single fluorescent-jacketed supervisor scrambles up the stand to get close to Dier, while two or three more a few feet higher up make no apparent moves to step into the scene. ‘Relax, relax,’ someone says as the steward desperately tries to pull Dier away. One phone-carrying fan seeks to push the steward out of the way to get a clearer line of vision.
The argument for a more rigorous system of policing than this can be an unpopular one to make, because fans say that they don’t want officers on the scene. But would it be too much to expect that a member of the Dier family should not have to listen to an individual abusing his brother?
Despite the fabulous wealth that Premier League status brings, clubs have sought to limit the money they spend on stewards and police.
experienced security experts paint a picture of Premier League clubs hiring stewards who do the job for the perks of a pie and free programme, earning little more than the £7.83 hourly living wage, receiving only cursory training.
Many are not licensed by the Security Industry Authority (SIA) and therefore cannot even search fans.
Metropolitan Police figures show that in the 2018/19 season, Tottenham were the most expensive club to police in London, costing the Met £1.4m and paying £125,732 themselves towards that cost. Premier League director of policy Bill Bush admitted last year that it was wrong that some grounds were entirely bereft of officers whose uniformed presence was ‘symbolically important’.
One female Metropolitan Police officer tells me: ‘For a London derby, they will have many police, vans, riot police, horses. Too much. For teams who have not caused trouble, there will be less. Once I reported something to a supervisor and was told we had no police that day. It is the same for all clubs.
‘The clubs co-ordinate with police on a risk basis and the police know this. They need to co-operate in getting a better consistency of police presence.’
The real disgrace, though, resides in a culture in which hate is allowed free rein with no apparent notion of self-policing.
Dier has never exuded a sense of entitlement. From summers spent with a Scottish sprint coach in his mid-teens to his switch from comfortable youth football at Sporting Lisbon to a brutally tough six-month loan at everton, he has done the hard yards to make it in football.
All of which is immaterial to the abusers, with their foul, indiscriminate tirades, disseminated from the cocooned protection of the group.
Dier’s brother decided on Wednesday night that enough was enough. And Dier, spotting that he had reaped a whirlwind for that decision, reached the same conclusion.
‘I remember times when my brother, Mark, might get angry or upset if someone was having a go at me in the stands,’ recalls Jamie Redknapp. ‘he’d want to say something. For me, it became par for the course; the life of a professional football player. You’d take it and sometimes you’d give it back. I don’t mind admitting to telling the odd critic to do one.
‘Dier is an intelligent boy but his fraternal instincts took over and I can understand that. It’s emotional when family are involved.
‘Football players are expected to act like saints but the halo can slip. Players are emotional beings; athletes who live on the edge. Dier would not go into your workplace and yell abuse at you. So why should you have the right to do that to him, in front of his family?
‘Because he’s better paid? Do me a favour. That’s not a valid excuse for the effing and blinding players are told to take on the chin.’