Belgium v Sweden Euro 2024 qualifier abandoned after Brussels shooting
Belgium’s Euro 2024 qualifier against Sweden was suspended at half-time and subsequently abandoned following the fatal shooting of two Swedes in Brussels on Monday evening.
Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level after a man, seen in a video on social media, claimed that he was the assailant and that he was from the Islamic State.
“Following a suspected terrorist attack in Brussels, it has been decided after consultation with the two teams and the local police authorities, that the Uefa Euro 2024 qualifying match between Belgium and Sweden is abandoned,” Uefa said in a statement.
Swedish reporters at the game said they had been informed of the attack just before the national anthems were played. Both sets of players told Uefa they did not want to play the second half. The score was level at 1-1. Viktor
Gyökeres had given Sweden a 15thminute lead before Romelu Lukaku equalised.
Sweden’s manager Janne Andersson said: “The team agreed 100% that we didn’t want to play on out of respect for the victims and their families.”
When news of the suspension came the Sweden supporters were asked to remain in the stadium. “Arrangements to safely escort supporters from the match out of the stadium are being examined,” Crisis Centre Belgium said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Supporters will be given more information at the stadium. Please follow the instructions of the emergency services.”
The two victims were reported to have been wearing Sweden shirts when they were shot.
“I feel completely shocked,” Sweden fan Pernilla Califf told the Aftonbladet newspaper. “We don’t understand any
thing. Everyone is taking off their Swedish shirts and changing into neutral clothes. This is really unpleasant.”
Belgium had already booked a place at the finals in Germany next year, while Austria’s 1-0 win over Azerbaijan earlier on Monday meant Sweden could not qualify.
Following the shooting on the Boulevard d’Ypres, the Belgium prime minister Alexander De Croo confirmed the victims were Swedish.
“My deepest condolences to the relatives of this cowardly attack,” he wrote on social media. “I have just offered my sincere condolences to the
Swedish PM following tonight’s harrowing attack on Swedish citizens in Brussels. Our thoughts are with the families and friends who lost their loved ones. As close partners the fight against terrorism is a joint one.”
Uefa added it would be making a “further announcement in due course”.
pound is still a pound like every other pound. For all the double-speak about levelling up Boris Johnson’s government refused the easy PR win of funds to renovate the now demolished Wrexham Kop. Frankly, nobody else was coming to save this place or shine the warming light of publicity.
Back at the ground the weather has decided to compromise: constant rain, constant sun, constant blue sky and a total blanket of cloud. Wrexham start slowly. Players at this level come in different shapes. Chief goalscorer Paul Mullin glides like a thoroughbred. Ollie Palmer, his partner, runs like he hates the grass, all rippling, pounding arms and legs.
Salford have the slim, silver-haired Mathew Lund, who looks more like a legendary 1960s jazz drummer than a hardworking deep midfielder. He scores the second goal to put Salford 2-0 up. The vast Matt Smith got the first, tumbling like a detonated chimney to trickle a header into the corner.
Spectators bathed in autumnal sunshine during the League Two match between Wrexham and Salford City at StoK Cae Ras.
The home crowd is calm but a little angsty. Wrexham don’t really have an attacking pattern. They have Palmer and Mullin running after the ball. “Earn your money Reds,” someone shouts and with 38 minutes gone Wrexham get one back, Elliot Lee heading in from a corner. At half-time there are perfunctory boos for the referee as the pitch empties to the sounds of Poison by Bel Biv Devoe, and this could be any football ground anywhere.
Is it though? “I’m not going to lose too much sleep over people saying, oh, it’s an American’s plaything,” says the Wrexham chief executive, Humphrey Ker, actor, writer friend of the owners and founding spirit of the new Wrexham.
“At the start there was a lot of headpatting. Then we started winning. But football is replete with terrible owners who are doing bad things to their clubs. This place has been through so much down the years. We had a millstone in the shape of a stand we just couldn’t afford to maintain. And, you know, but for the grace of god there goes the third oldest football club in the world down the drain.”
Ker has been a surprise element in all this, a conduit for the owners, but also a communicator, public face and genuinely involved member of the executive, both emotionally and in the basic details. So what happens to Wrexham if the show gets cancelled?
Humphrey Ker, the British comedian, actor and writer, who was made executive director of Wrexham by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
“We’ve been trying to work that out ourselves. It is interesting, at the end of the previous series there was no real drop off in traffic of people coming or watching the games on iFollow. We’ve got this season and then another one for now. The idea is over that period you get under enough people’s skin and they are locked in. The tour of America in the summer was mad. We played in front of 55,000 people in North Carolina.”
The tour was also slightly controversial, a marketing trip as opposed to the more traditional local match practice. “From our perspective it was a huge success. Again it’s the short term versus the long term. Football is massively on the rise in the US and one of the things Rob in particular has been very strong on is he wants to make Wrexham America’s team. If you follow a team in the US or you don’t have strong affiliations, it’s Real Madrid or Barcelona. Rob is trying to cut into that market, to make us the one people get behind.”
Madrid. Barcelona. Wrexham. The Galeekticos. Maybe that market will now also include the League Two’s coming power, darling of the doe-eyed rimjobbers. It has to be said, so far the ownership has delivered on its promises. The women’s team has been ramped up successfully. The players and coach are stars of WTW series two. Plans are in train to reopen the club’s academy. Jobs are literally being created, with a doubling of club employees. The new Kop stand will add 5,000 to the matchday crowds.
Salford attack the end where the massive Kop used to stand.
What could go too far wrong under this model, which is, as various people point out across a weekend in Wrexham, not exactly Saudi Arabia? Some kind of comedy actor soft power struggle? Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill buy Hereford United, desperate to transition their personal economies away from the world’s depleting stores of comic acting roles. Paul Rudd buys Leyton Orient, pumps it full of Ant Man sponsorship deals, and wins League Two five times in a row. Will Ferrell stages the 2038 Fifa World Cup in a nation-building gambit to prevent Kevin Hart from invading him.
“It’s all pretty transparent in the end,” says Andy Gilpin, host of the Fearless In Devotion Wrexham podcast. “The owners need to be seen as the good guys for their own brand. They can’t leave it in a mess.
Gilpin is another who has been there through the thin times. “We’ve come from 15 years when what could go wrong did go wrong. One year we lost our top scorer to a tropical disease, the next year we lost our top scorer to a bite from a false widow spider. I’ve had a few people come on to me with that contrary attitude. A lot of fans will say everything’s a bit different to what it was.”
The doe-eyed yank rimjobbers again? “Wrexham has one of the biggest industrial estates in Europe. We have the biggest slag heap in the western hemisphere. They’re not always the first things people put on the tourism pamphlets. But there are now four or five places where tourists will come and spend their money. You get swathes of Australian tourists wandering around the various pound shops in the high street. That to me as a Wrexham lad is absolutely nuts. But it’s also great.”
Back at the STōk the game against Salford ends with a fittingly cinematic winner, scored by local boy and documentary regular Jordan Davies. Arthur Okonkwo, on loan from Arsenal, makes a fine save at the death. David Beckham still isn’t here.
Jordan Davies celebrates scoring Wrexham’s third and winning goal in the 89th minute. Davies and and Paul Mullin embrace after the final whistle as they are filmed by the Welcome to Wrexham documentary crew.
Afterwards it’s another low-key starry moment to hear the words of Parkinson, who talks ruefully about “a lacklustre feel” at the start, and in the flesh looks even more like the dad in an advert for family-friendly sliced bread.
It won’t always be sunny here. But for now all is well in north Wales, and indeed at Disney+ HQ as that parallel world of a streaming documentary, by far the most valuable asset in the league, continues to churn out the numbers.