English football authorities have renewed appeals for fans to behave responsibly after Thursday’s Euro 2016 match against Wales, in the wake of chaotic scenes in Lille during which dozens of people were arrested and 16 were people taken to hospital.
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| A fan sits on a road sign in Lille on Wednesday. |
Police said they had arrested 36 people on Wednesday in the northern French city, where thousands of England and Wales supporters are based before the game in the smaller city of Lens, about 25 miles away. The arrests followed occasional skirmishes involving a small number of fans and some police, during which officers used teargas to disperse the crowds.
The centre of Lille was again blanketed with squads of CRS riot police on Thursday morning, as large numbers of fans made their way to the train station to head to Lens or drank in bars before watching the game, beginning at 3pm local time (2pm BST), on television.
Martin Glenn, the chief executive of the Football Association, said he was awaiting a report into the disturbances, but said it appeared that “the atmosphere seemed to change overnight” in Lille.
He appealed to English fans not to create further problems for French authorities, who were also concentrating on terrorist incidents such as the murder on Monday of a French policeman and his partner, who were stabbed to death in front of their infant son near Paris.
“I think the message to all English fans, Welsh fans too, [is] the French are trying to deal with a real security threat,” Glenn told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Behave responsibly, come and enjoy the game but just have a think about the wider position. Show some consideration and respect.”
Uefa, which has threatened to eject Russia and England from the tournament if their fans persistently misbehave, released only a brief statement in which is said it “regrets the skirmishes which occurred in Lille last night”. It added: “Police forces made several arrests and were quick to restore order and keep the situation under control.”
In Lens, where there was heavy rain alongside a heavy police presence on Thursday morning, all was calm as fans began to arrive for the match. The regional administration head for Lens said earlier this week that there would be more than 1,200 police officers on duty, with an extra 1,200 private security mobilised on the day.
Fabienne Buccio said that they would aim to keep the two sets of fans apart, but England and Wales supporters have generally mixed well in Lille and there are not expected to be any serious problems between the two sets of fans in Lens. Meanwhile, Uefa has indicated that there is no prospect of immediate sanctions against England following the skirmishes in Lille, which ended with police charging a small group of fans and deploying teargas in an attempt to clear the city centre around midnight.
The trouble in Lille on Wednesday was generally isolated, if occasionally chaotic, involving around a couple of hundred predominantly English fans, many of whom had been drinking heavily for much of the day.
It began in the early afternoon when a large group of supporters, mainly young men, moved from outside a bar next to Lille’s station to one by a side street, where they kept up a repertoire of initially good-natured songs and chants.
However, as Russian supporters began to arrive in the area following their team’s 1-2 loss to Slovakia, more of the chants became directed at them, a legacy of clashes between England and Russia fans after their game in Marseille on Saturday, and allegations that organised groups of Russian troublemakers targeted some English.
Amid chants of “Fuck off Russia!”, with pointed fingers at Russian supporters, a melee began following the bang of a firework, when it appeared that a small group of Russian fans charged. This prompted a period of chaos, with fans and police chasing each other around the small back streets of Lille’s old town, and teargas was used.
Later, during the evening and into the night, police several times charged or used gas against crowds of singing fans, again predominantly English. This time, however, there appeared to be no fighting to prompt the police action, just a desire to disperse the crowds, who seemed good-natured if rowdy, sometimes also including French supporters.
At one point police tried to marshal a hundred or so people towards the official fan zone area, where a big screen was showing Wednesday night’s France v Albania game, only to then escort them back to the station. “There’s no strategy. They seem to have no strategy,” one English police liaison officer with the fans could be heard saying into a phone.
Some fans said they felt they had been unfairly targeted during the evening. Speaking at about 11.30pm, following one police charge to disperse fans, a supporter from Burnley who gave his name as Luke said: “The English are being portrayed in a bad light. We’re being looked at as bad people when we’re just singing, dancing and having a good time.”
Other supporters, however, said they had experienced no problems with police. “There’s a lot of them – there’s police everywhere – but for the most part I think they have been pretty good,” said one Welsh supporter, asking to not be named. “They seem to hang back and let people get on with it usually.”
One Russian fan sitting near a group of England supporters on Wednesday evening said that the massed singing and chanting could feel intimidating.
“They occupy this place and we feel a bit uncomfortable,” said the fan, Ilya from St Petersburg. “As long as they’re not aggressive it’s OK. Most of the Russians who come here are not aggressive and the English gathered in the bar, they are less than 10% of the total.”
guardian
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