England fans’ finest hour
After the era of hooliganism which embarrassed the nation, Wembley was proof that football has power to unify us too
AT THE edge of the Place Charles II, the main square in the Belgian town of Charleroi that had been desecrated by the chairthrowing, hate-ridden grotesques who made up an unhealthy percentage of England’s support 15 years ago, sat the imposing Eglise Saint-Christophe.
It was peaceful and quiet inside, a sanctuary from the chaos and shame of what had unfolded in the past couple of days, as Kevin Keegan’s England staggered around Euro 2000 and our supporters enhanced their reputation for violence and mayhem.
In the church vestibule, there was a visitors’ book. An England fan had jotted a note in it in the aftermath of the hooliganism. It was the most recent entry. ‘I am sorry for what has happened to your city,’ he, or she, had written. ‘We are not all like that.’
That kind of thing happened regularly back then. Following England in the Eighties and Nineties was like watching a compilation video of Football Shame’s Greatest Hits. Sports reporters went for the game. News reporters came on ‘hooli-watch’. It was a toss-up who got more in the paper.
Once, during the 1998 World Cup, a group of us found ourselves sitting in the bar of the Sofitel in Marseille, watching then Football Association chief executive Graham Kelly puffing on a cigar as he gazed across the old port to where England fans were setting the city alight.
There was a night of ambulance chasing for reporters in Bratislava in 2002, after running battles between Slovakia and England supporters culminated in two England fans being shot and dragged into the foyer of the team hotel on the main square for treatment.
We catalogue the bad times. They stick in our memories. So maybe, now and again, we ought to balance things up. Not everything is sweetness and light but, in recent years, there have been plenty of reasons to point out that things have changed.
That was never more true than on Tuesday night at Wembley. It is easy to make sweeping statements at a time like this, so here’s another one — the game against France, a game that on another night would have been a meaningless friendly, was the England football fans’ finest hour.
In the past, when we have talked about fans overshadowing football, it has carried a negative connotation. It was code for the fact that the fans let us down, that they embarrassed the team, that they embarrassed the country, that they embarrassed the decent majority.
Not on Tuesday. On Tuesday, the fans overshadowed the football again. Only this time, their conduct, their passion, their determination not to be cowed and their insistence on making gestures of solidarity with France fans, sent shivers of pride down the spines of everyone who witnessed it.
If football is about anything, it is about community. Usually fans stick fiercely to their own community. That is where the pride lies. On Tuesday night, England fans discarded the old boundaries. They embraced a bigger community.
It felt uplifting to be English at Wembley on Tuesday night — and there have not been too many times we have been able to say that in the past 20 or 30 years. It felt good to see England fans casting aside old rivalries for what was right.
On the drive in to the stadium, its arch lit in the red, white and blue of the Tricolour, England fans were being interviewed on the radio from outside the ground, parents talking about why they had felt it important to come to the match and to bring their children.
They said they wanted to show support for France after the Paris attacks. They also said they wanted to send a message to people who wanted to try to mutilate our way of life. A few fans stayed away out of fear. Many more bought tickets after the attacks in support.
They had realised by then that what the terrorists had attacked the previous Friday night was not a barracks or a police station or a government building but normal life. They attacked a concert hall, bars and restaurants and a football match at the Stade de France.
THE FA read the situation beautifully and treated it with great sensitivity. The England fans were magnificent from beginning to end. There was the standing ovation for the French team when they came out for the warm-up and the raising of the Tricolour in the crowd instead of the Cross of St George.
There was the valiant attempt to sing La Marseillaise before kick-off, the applause for the French and English teams as they stood together for a photo, the impeccably observed minute’s silence.
There was more too. The standing ovation when second-half substitute, Lassana Diarra, whose cousin was killed at the Bataclan concert hall during the attacks, ran on to the pitch. ‘I love England,’ Manchester City’s France international Samir Nasri wrote on Twitter.
We all loved England at that moment. At last, we were looking at English football fans and seeing the best of us.
There are still a few people saying it was just a football match. There are still a few saying that what happened at Wembley on Tuesday will make no difference to anybody. They’re the people who are dead from the neck up.
What happened at Wembley did not save anyone’s life. Nor will it do anything to prevent future attacks. But the way England football fans behaved on Tuesday night meant something to the people of France.
At a time like this, that was enough. It was enough to make us proud of English football. It was enough to make us remember that, even though football can be tribal and divisive, there are times when it has the power to unify us too.
At a time when forces are trying to rip the world apart, a Wembley crowd did what little it could to try to piece it back together.