ENGLAND WARNING
Police tell fans: Don’t sing your nationalistic songs at World Cup
ENGLAND fans will be seen as laying down ‘a challenge’ to Russian hooligans if they sing nationalistic anthems at the World Cup next summer, Britain’s top football police officer has told the Mail on Sunday.
Assistant chief constable Mark Roberts, head of the Football Policing Unit, said supporters cannot blame others if they repeat the songs which provoked pitched battles with Russian fans at Euro 2016 in Marseille and urged them to learn lessons from those clashes, which have left one fan with life-affecting injuries.
Roberts said: ‘It’s indicative of an
imperialistic mindset, saying: ‘We are here, on your ground’ — and that can provoke a hostile reaction.’ Fans need to learn from some of the experiences they have had. The French found some of the chants very offensive. We saw the same when Leicester fans sang about Gibraltar in Spain last season. It is calculated to cause offence. Before pointing fingers, fans sometimes have to look at themselves.’
British officers have already been working with Russian police for over a year and believe the host nation’s officers ‘talk our kind of language,’ as Roberts put it — with their emphasis on intelligence-led policing.
The Russians attended May’s Champions League final in Cardiff as part of their study of crowd management and searching of fans. ‘We can find more common ground with their officers than with some western European countries,’ Roberts added.
British officers believe there cannot be complacency about anti-social behaviour — with up to 20,000 England fans expected to head to next summer’s tournament. Last season, there was a 30 per cent increase in disorder at British domestic games.
Asked what their strategy would be if a minority of English fans misbehaved, Moscow deputy police chief Andrey Zakharov said: ‘During the World Cup we will have a few fan fest areas — areas that are specifically designated for people to come together, drink some beer, enjoy football together. Generally I don’t expect any problems. We have enough police officers to deploy.’