Football hooligans should go to prison

THERE’S been much debate about the sad ending of English dreams of glory and the predictable fallout with many commentating on it across all forms of media, mostly though talk radio shows, newspapers and television.

Could no one see this coming? really? The lunatics forcing their drink-raddled selves into the stadium without tickets, the chaos caused once they were in and attacking law-abiding fans, the disgusting abuse of our black English players on social media and the Met Police trying to wash their hands of any responsibility for this disaster.

Later reports show excessive drinking and fighting well before the

final in the local area with hardly any police presence; Deputy Assistant Commissioner Jane Connor’s washing of her hands for any fault is all too typical of that police force.

The Football Association were more interested in profits rather than paying for more stadium-based police presence, as they always are.

Hooligans have sadly been a feature of English football for decades, as any football supporter of a certain age like myself knows only too well, with so many Home Secretaries promising to do something about them and never really bothering, just as the current incumbent will, given time and distance, brush it under the carpet, Boris Johnson will make flowery speeches for a while and then, as is his way, ignore the problem.

Given current technology, the loons at Wembley will be easily tracked down and all should serve prison sentences. The evil tweeters with their race hate are a different matter; I doubt that many of them have ever attended a football match of any kind.

If Donald Trump can be banned from all media, then so can they – and the bosses made millionaires by the hate-filled media should be held to account and made to ban them for eternity. Our modern game doesn’t need the lunatic element and they should be subject to banning orders and made to report to police stations on match days.

I am also sadly correct in predicting that our highways and byways will have generous coatings of discarded plastic English flags and other miscellaneous rubbish sold to one-off England supporters who would struggle to find any of the

football league grounds, who seem to come alive once every two years, at European and World Cups, and use the excuse to drink until they fall over. Then we have the dreary ‘Three lions on my T-shirt’ and other ditties pushed down our throats incessantly until real supporters can’t bear listening to it.

I really wish the England football team well and hope this present team can win a cup or two over the years; being runner-up to the best side in the world is no disgrace, but let’s have so much less of the hype that goes alongside it.

Stuart Eels Chippenham