FA cracks down on hooligans
FA acts following shame of friendly in Germany Warning to supporters ahead of Scotland match
The Football Association has issued life bans to England supporters for the first time, amid fears that the rise of a new generation of 18 to 25-year-old hooligans is leading to some of the worst behaviour in world football.
Two supporters have received the punishment in a major crackdown ahead of Saturday’s World Cup qualifier against Scotland at Hampden Park.
The ban follows the appalling conduct by some fans at the recent England friendly against Germany in Dortmund.
Within that, a new group of young fans has been identified. These fans are regarded as behaving differently from the traditional football hooligan, and treat England away fixtures as a chance to act as badly as they want. Officials claim that these young supporters almost lose their identity with their drinking and bad behaviour.
The warning comes before Saturday’s fixture in Glasgow, which is fraught with the possibility of trouble, not least because of the 5pm kick-off time, which was set by Uefa. The authorities and police are concerned at the additional time this allows fans for drinking and then becoming abusive or violent.
The FA will make a general appeal ahead of the game for supporters to behave, while new measures are being introduced for the fixture. These include the development of a team of stewards from Wembley who are accustomed to working with England.
The game also takes place amid a heightened level of security following the terror attacks in London and Manchester. England also travel to Paris for a friendly against France next Tuesday.
England have an official allocation of 4,761 tickets for the Scotland match and 2,321 for France, with fans urged to arrive early and expect extra security checks.
The FA is desperate to avoid more of the type of scenes which marred the March friendly in Dortmund. The game was blighted by drunkenness, puerile chants about wars, “10 German bombers” and the IRA, after which the governing body was notified of the conduct of 59 fans.
Of that number, 20 were found to be members of the England Supporters Travel Club, the official body run by the FA for fans.
As a result of the FA’S inquiries, 16 members of the club were suspended, with four warning letters
Conduct of a small number of England fans, fuelled by alcohol, is among the worst in football
issued. In addition, nine fans were suspended for breach of membership rules – ranging from being rude to staff and bad behaviour to being involved in ticketing scams – and two more were warned.
Most damningly, the FA identified two more supporters from police footage, whose conduct was so appalling that they have been banned for life. It is the first time this has happened, and it results from evidence that the fans in question had made Nazi-style salutes, Hitler imitations and cutthroat gestures aimed at German supporters.
The previous longest ban handed out by the FA was five years ago, for five years, as a result of racist behaviour. If any fan were to be found guilty of acting in that way now, they too would be banned for life.
The FA is determined to do all it can to stamp out such incidents, both inside and outside stadiums, and in total 27 fans were suspended following what happened in Dortmund, with six warned and one further case pending.
The FA acknowledges that the conduct of a small number of England fans is not only extremely embarrassing but, fuelled by alcohol, is among the worst in football. Within that there is a younger generation who follow England and who act differently and more randomly than previous hooligans.
The issue is an extremely difficult one for the FA to manage, given it is not responsible for all the fans who attend games or are present in the cities where the matches take place. It can be difficult for the FA to distinguish between members and non-members, though it views CCTV footage and surveillance and intelligence reports.
After Dortmund the FA also emailed all the fans who travelled with them. Within an hour they had received 100 replies, with the vast majority saying they were pleased that action was being taken. Incredibly there were, however, two or three fans who replied that they thought the behaviour in Dortmund was fine. Now the FA is aware of who they are.
The membership of England’s official travel club has plummeted to its lowest level – reflecting the disappointment in performances at recent tournament, the location of some of those tournaments, and disillusionment over the controversial reorganisation of how ‘points’ were awarded for attending games, which has since been amended.
Nevertheless there are now just 8,000 members – the scheme had 57,000 at its peak, when the new Wembley Stadium opened in 2007 – and half as many as there were when England competed in Euro 2016 in France last summer.
The number is expected to increase substantially ahead of the World Cup next year, although the fact that it is taking place in Russia is not encouraging.
Worryingly for the FA, there has also been a decline in families being part of the membership scheme.