If any other country had this happen we would be demanding points deductions or playing behind closed doors. It would be hypocritical to not apply this to England.
Disgusting, entitled thuggish behaviour.
They should have to go through a mandatory education course about crowd crushes to be allowed anywhere near a stadium again.
The games were poorly managed and putting a few stewards against thousands of people trying to break in was a dangerous mess and people did get hurt (capitalism, eh?)
I do have sympathy with the fans trying to break in though, the amount of corporate seats at the game and the amount of smug celebrities who managed to wangle a place at the final rather than real match going fans was sickening. I’m not saying that the fans without tickets should have been allowed in, and the way they were handled *was* reckless and sanctions are deserved, my only point is that I can see why some people did it. For example, me and my family have been home and away with England for years and couldn’t get tickets, why the fuck should Tom Cruise and Kate Moss get one?!
Edit: r/uk hot take: “it’s good ackshurely that slebs are prioritised over plebs because they probably pay more money” good grief…
My BIL has attended matches for the last 40 years. He states the level of organisation was ludicrously bad & that he hasn’t heard that level of racist abuse at a football match (home or away) since the mid 1980s. This is a guy whose been to Afghanistan & Iraq during Gulf 1 & 2. So not exactly “ a gentle flower!”
The racism was NOT concerning peoples nationality, it was ONLY based on skin colour.
I’ve been to around 250 matches across around 140 grounds in my life and this was the only ever time I’ve felt unsafe, and was the worst organised of the lot.
The main issue they have is that they can’t have a “ring of steel” around the ground due to it basically being a retail park. In newer grounds abroad, often they are out of town so it’s far easier to have a perimeter fence, and to stop people getting to the ground.
There were nowhere near enough police, and stewards aren’t security, so I don’t expect them to stop people attacking/rushing the stadium.
I suppose it was a perfect storm with the above combined with an “ending” or at least easing of covid restrictions, a lack of fan parks in the capital, and there just being a lot of arseholes amongst us.
I hope the police have gone through all the video footage and identified and charged everyone recognisable. They should all be named and shamed, fined, have at least Community service orders and banned from all league football grounds and from travelling abroad to games.
The excess alcohol consumed by so many before matches needs to be addressed. People need to be breathalysed before entry and denied access if they fail the tests. Timed slots for entry to the ground would help reduce the bottleneck too.
It was supposed to be a fantastic match, but we all knew it would go wrong to some degree, mostly because of excess alcohol. But I didn’t expect them to storm the stadium. That was absolutely disgusting.
Astroworld goes to show what can happen when a venue is overcrowded. I dread to think we could have had another Hillsborough at a final like that
Good old football fans, being upstanding citizens as per usual
I can believe the poor organisation. I have been to a few events this year (not football related), and the organisation for some of them can only be describes as shambolic. Now poor organisation for a 1000 business people is not a big deal, just an inconvenience. But I imagine that the same poor organisation with 10000 drunk football fans could be more problematic.
I think the core problem is that event management companies have lost staff and expertise over the last two years, and many of them can only be described as structurally incompetent.
Although to be fair this situation is likely never to happen again in our lifetimes:
1) England reaching the final of a major tournament, plausible.
2) England reaching the final of a major tournament AT HOME. Not for a few generations.
3) Happening during a pandemic with limited capacity but the knowledge of there being empty seats (if it was during normal times and sold out to capacity, less likely to occur)
I mean it was a perfect storm. I say this as a non-Englishman not really that bothered about football but:
– Furthest they’ve got in a football tournament since god knows when
– They’re hosting
– Nobody can hire enough frontline bodies for anything right now
– Everyone’s been in lockdown for so long they’ve been gagging for a release
– There was a national fever of which I’ve never seen building up week on week
– The Scottish fans had demonstrated weeks earlier that the city was undefended, so to speak
It brought out every wanker from the white cliffs to the north moors. They poured into London, immediately recognised they couldn’t be stopped, and did as they pleased.
The fact they lost was probably for the best, because I’m pretty sure the celebrations if they’d have won would have been unbridled chaos straight through into next morning.
Yah no shit. I remember seeing videos of people kicking the shit out of people that managed to break through into the stadium. Like full on kicking them in the head just because they got in without a ticket.
The weird thing is local derbies are heavily policed yet this seemed to to be very very lightly policed. Letting people gather on Wembley way for hours is obviously not a great idea and even before any of the major trouble it was obvious just from social media it was a particularly wild scene
>**after authorities failed to plan for the “worst-case scenario” despite a series of warnings.**
Boris Johnson’s Britain to it’s core. It’s going to take 15-20 years at least to recover from that wretched man. If we ever recover from him.
The security at Wembley has always been a joke, has been since it opened, the 25k empty seats and Rngland reaching the final, writing was on the wall there would be thousands upon thousands going there.
Blame lays first on unruly fans etc but this could of been easily avoided by the FA having proper crowd control in place and employing competent people, Wembleys tradion of just employing people for ‘gig’ shifts only working there for one event leads to the majority not caring about the job or knowing how to do it, seemed like only 1 in 20 of the stewards that day had any idea what was going on.
Also simply putting even just 4/5 police officers at all the gates inside the actual ground would of put alot of people off trying to bunk in, the gates that had a large police presence where left relatively calm, while those without where chaos, people will chance bunking in it they know there only going to get thrown back out, if theres a chmace they may be arrested/detained by the police they’ll just leave it. A valid police presence early at the gates would of led to far far less people attempting to get in.
15 comments
If any other country had this happen we would be demanding points deductions or playing behind closed doors. It would be hypocritical to not apply this to England.
Disgusting, entitled thuggish behaviour.
They should have to go through a mandatory education course about crowd crushes to be allowed anywhere near a stadium again.
The games were poorly managed and putting a few stewards against thousands of people trying to break in was a dangerous mess and people did get hurt (capitalism, eh?)
I do have sympathy with the fans trying to break in though, the amount of corporate seats at the game and the amount of smug celebrities who managed to wangle a place at the final rather than real match going fans was sickening. I’m not saying that the fans without tickets should have been allowed in, and the way they were handled *was* reckless and sanctions are deserved, my only point is that I can see why some people did it. For example, me and my family have been home and away with England for years and couldn’t get tickets, why the fuck should Tom Cruise and Kate Moss get one?!
Edit: r/uk hot take: “it’s good ackshurely that slebs are prioritised over plebs because they probably pay more money” good grief…
My BIL has attended matches for the last 40 years. He states the level of organisation was ludicrously bad & that he hasn’t heard that level of racist abuse at a football match (home or away) since the mid 1980s. This is a guy whose been to Afghanistan & Iraq during Gulf 1 & 2. So not exactly “ a gentle flower!”
The racism was NOT concerning peoples nationality, it was ONLY based on skin colour.
I’ve been to around 250 matches across around 140 grounds in my life and this was the only ever time I’ve felt unsafe, and was the worst organised of the lot.
The main issue they have is that they can’t have a “ring of steel” around the ground due to it basically being a retail park. In newer grounds abroad, often they are out of town so it’s far easier to have a perimeter fence, and to stop people getting to the ground.
There were nowhere near enough police, and stewards aren’t security, so I don’t expect them to stop people attacking/rushing the stadium.
I suppose it was a perfect storm with the above combined with an “ending” or at least easing of covid restrictions, a lack of fan parks in the capital, and there just being a lot of arseholes amongst us.
I hope the police have gone through all the video footage and identified and charged everyone recognisable. They should all be named and shamed, fined, have at least Community service orders and banned from all league football grounds and from travelling abroad to games.
The excess alcohol consumed by so many before matches needs to be addressed. People need to be breathalysed before entry and denied access if they fail the tests. Timed slots for entry to the ground would help reduce the bottleneck too.
It was supposed to be a fantastic match, but we all knew it would go wrong to some degree, mostly because of excess alcohol. But I didn’t expect them to storm the stadium. That was absolutely disgusting.
Astroworld goes to show what can happen when a venue is overcrowded. I dread to think we could have had another Hillsborough at a final like that
Good old football fans, being upstanding citizens as per usual
I can believe the poor organisation. I have been to a few events this year (not football related), and the organisation for some of them can only be describes as shambolic. Now poor organisation for a 1000 business people is not a big deal, just an inconvenience. But I imagine that the same poor organisation with 10000 drunk football fans could be more problematic.
I think the core problem is that event management companies have lost staff and expertise over the last two years, and many of them can only be described as structurally incompetent.
Although to be fair this situation is likely never to happen again in our lifetimes:
1) England reaching the final of a major tournament, plausible.
2) England reaching the final of a major tournament AT HOME. Not for a few generations.
3) Happening during a pandemic with limited capacity but the knowledge of there being empty seats (if it was during normal times and sold out to capacity, less likely to occur)
I mean it was a perfect storm. I say this as a non-Englishman not really that bothered about football but:
– Furthest they’ve got in a football tournament since god knows when
– They’re hosting
– Nobody can hire enough frontline bodies for anything right now
– Everyone’s been in lockdown for so long they’ve been gagging for a release
– There was a national fever of which I’ve never seen building up week on week
– The Scottish fans had demonstrated weeks earlier that the city was undefended, so to speak
It brought out every wanker from the white cliffs to the north moors. They poured into London, immediately recognised they couldn’t be stopped, and did as they pleased.
The fact they lost was probably for the best, because I’m pretty sure the celebrations if they’d have won would have been unbridled chaos straight through into next morning.
Yah no shit. I remember seeing videos of people kicking the shit out of people that managed to break through into the stadium. Like full on kicking them in the head just because they got in without a ticket.
The weird thing is local derbies are heavily policed yet this seemed to to be very very lightly policed. Letting people gather on Wembley way for hours is obviously not a great idea and even before any of the major trouble it was obvious just from social media it was a particularly wild scene
>**after authorities failed to plan for the “worst-case scenario” despite a series of warnings.**
Boris Johnson’s Britain to it’s core. It’s going to take 15-20 years at least to recover from that wretched man. If we ever recover from him.
The security at Wembley has always been a joke, has been since it opened, the 25k empty seats and Rngland reaching the final, writing was on the wall there would be thousands upon thousands going there.
Blame lays first on unruly fans etc but this could of been easily avoided by the FA having proper crowd control in place and employing competent people, Wembleys tradion of just employing people for ‘gig’ shifts only working there for one event leads to the majority not caring about the job or knowing how to do it, seemed like only 1 in 20 of the stewards that day had any idea what was going on.
Also simply putting even just 4/5 police officers at all the gates inside the actual ground would of put alot of people off trying to bunk in, the gates that had a large police presence where left relatively calm, while those without where chaos, people will chance bunking in it they know there only going to get thrown back out, if theres a chmace they may be arrested/detained by the police they’ll just leave it. A valid police presence early at the gates would of led to far far less people attempting to get in.