English football’s day of embarrassment and why it has damaged the 2030 World Cup bid
https://theathletic.com/2703455/2021/07/13/english-footballs-day-of-embarrassment-and-why-it-has-damaged-2030-world-cup-bid/
It was the morning after the night before and, on Wembley Way, a sense of calm was slowly returning.
The debris — broken bottles, cans and piles of rubbish — was being gathered up and the streets were being hosed down. Euro 2020 was over and the clean-up operation was well advanced.
There was no escaping what had happened, though.
The final of Euro 2020 had been billed as the greatest day in English sport since the 1966 World Cup final. “Football’s coming home” and all that.
Instead, it turned into a nightmare. Not because of the outcome on the pitch — as agonising as it was for England to lose on penalties to Italy and miss out on a first major trophy in 55 years — but because of the ugly, chaotic scenes that ruined the occasion for so many of those present.
Those scenes included:
Thousands of people forcing their way into the stadium without tickets, some of them breaking through barricades and storming entrance gates reserved for disabled spectators
Numerous stewards injured and being subjected to racial abuse as they tried to stop those forcing entry
Fighting inside the stadium, with videos showing one England fan being kicked by others while lying on the ground
England players’ family members being attacked and subjected to racial abuse, while others had to fight off efforts to have their tickets or phones snatched from their hands
The VIP section so overrun with ticketless fans that some family members, including Italy coach Roberto Mancini’s son Andrea, had to sit on the steps because his allocated seat had been taken
Numerous allegations of fans openly snorting cocaine
Breaches of the COVID-19 checkpoints, allowing fans to enter the stadium without showing proof of a negative test, and the infiltration of the Italian supporters’ bio-secure “bubble”
Metropolitan Police confirmed on Monday evening that 53 people were arrested at Wembley “for a number of offences, including public order offences, ABH, drunk and disorderly and criminal damage.” The force added that 19 officers who had been on duty at Wembley were injured.
Deputy assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor says, “The unacceptable scenes we saw yesterday were a small number of people intent on using the football as an excuse to behave appallingly towards other members of the public and officers.”
England fans tore down barriers outside the stadium (Photo: Chloe Knott – Danehouse/Getty Images)
The Football Association has promised a “full review and investigation” into the evening’s event, while stating that “the behaviour of the people who illegally forced their way into the stadium was unacceptable, dangerous and showed total disregard for the safety and security protocols in place”.
UEFA, European football’s governing body, is expected to open disciplinary proceedings against the FA over the various incidents and security issues.
The chaos represents a serious blow to Wembley’s hopes of staging UEFA and FIFA showpiece events in the future — including Champions League finals and a planned UK/Irish joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
“It was horrible, one of the worst days of my life,” says one member of Wembley security staff, speaking to The Athletic on condition of anonymity. “I’ve worked at many stadiums and been in the security industry for many years and this was by the far the worst I have ever seen.”
He says the mood felt dark and menacing from the moment he and colleagues reported to work at 1pm. Kick-off was still seven hours away, but there was a growing sense of unease among the security staff and stewards as the crowds on Wembley Way grew and grew and drank and drank.
COVID-19 restrictions had been eased since the early stages of the tournament, but Wembley’s capacity for the final had been restricted to around 65,000, with 25 per cent of seats meant to be left empty for health and safety reasons. And yet, hours before kick-off, the areas around the stadium were packed.
Most fans would describe the atmosphere at that stage as boisterous rather than dangerous. In places, it bordered on the euphoric. Three Lions was being belted out with gusto, as was the Gareth Southgate-inspired version of Atomic Kitten’s Whole Again and an ode to Harry Maguire’s imagined drinking habits (and the size of his head), along with the jingoistic dirge about how “the RAF from England” shot down “10 German bombers”.
England fans gathered outside Wembley stadium for the Euros final (Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
The numbers kept growing, though, and there was a feeling among security staff that things were getting out of hand. There were people climbing onto bus shelters and up lamp posts and, as stewards were required to intervene to stop anyone getting injured, abuse was shouted back at them.
Former Liverpool and Leeds United defender Dominic Matteo was among many fans who felt unnerved by the atmosphere.
He was there with three friends, who had organised tickets as a treat for him after his recent illness. As it transpired, they would not even get into the stadium, such was the chaos they were confronted with from the moment they arrived at Wembley Park tube station.
“You could feel the atmosphere changing the closer we got to Wembley on the Tube,” Matteo told The Athletic. “I’m not the fun police, far from it, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that crazy. You couldn’t walk along Wembley Way for rubbish on the floor, glass bottles. It was mayhem.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘What have we come to here? It should be a celebration.’ I felt sorry for the people trying to manage it. They were young people working as stewards and they were having to deal with people doing whatever they wanted. It wasn’t a nice experience at all. But that was just the beginning.”
Why were there so many fans gathered outside Wembley when the stadium was to be only 75 per cent full for the final?
Because it is no longer just a stadium. The ground is now surrounded by bars and a shopping centre and people are encouraged to regard it as somewhere to enjoy a day out, not just watch a match. It is just that nobody seemed to imagine there would be thousands upon thousands of fans converging there without tickets.
Some fans went to Wembley simply for the fun of it, or with the faint hope of buying a ticket from some of the touts who were offering them for £3,000 apiece. If they couldn’t get in, they would enjoy the atmosphere, watch the final at one of the bars near the stadium and then — they hoped — enjoy the England victory festivities afterwards.
COVID-19 restrictions meant many of the usual mass gatherings in front of big screens were off-limits.
Plans to show the match on a big screen at Hyde Park in central London and other venues were abandoned on health and safety grounds. If you wanted to be part of a communal event around England’s first major final in 55 years, the options were reduced.
But many others went to Wembley on Sunday with the specific intention of forcing their way in.
That was certainly the plan of a group of twentysomethings on the 10.20am train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston. Two of them were openly bragging about having “jibbed in” to the semi-final against Denmark at the same venue four days earlier and they were adamant that they and the rest of their gang were going to be inside Wembley to watch the Italy game too.
Supporters groups were well aware of the “jibbing” problem during that semi-final. There were estimates that at least 200 had managed to get in without tickets, whether by tailgating behind someone else at a turnstile or by duping stewards by showing screengrabs of an electronic ticket on their phone — and then making a run for it.
Considering the scale of the event and the crowd, the police presence on Sunday felt relatively small. It is clear that the numbers at Wembley caught the Met by surprise.
“We spent a lot of time encouraging and asking people not to turn up if they hadn’t got a ticket prior to the event,” deputy assistant commissioner Taylor says. “And clearly a lot of people chose to ignore us.”
“Our gate was number 123,” says Paul Robinson, a disabled Hull City and England fan from the West Midlands. “As a wheelchair user, you go to the big door next to the turnstiles. You knock on the door and they let you in. It’s a cage, like an airlock. They close one door behind you, then open the next one after they’ve scanned your tickets.
“We got there just before 6pm and there was a big queue. I asked a steward what was going on and he told me there were some fans who had got in without tickets. The steward said they had been given instructions not to let anyone else in until those fans without tickets had been found and chucked out.
“They started throwing the odd one or two out. But then some fans started jumping the queue where we were and… I’m not being funny, but they clearly weren’t disabled. We started going in one by one and got inside OK. Then we went round to gate 103 to meet our friends on the concourse for a drink, like we’d arranged.
“We were waiting there and all of a sudden this guy runs past at full speed with stewards chasing him. He was caught and marched out. A few minutes later, two or three more came running past. Then there’s a kerfuffle because about 20 or 30 have come through the disabled entrance into this giant cage. They’d charged the door and piled inside, but then realised they were trapped in this cage.
“They were locked inside this area. About five minutes later, they were still being held in there when the giant exit doors next to the wheelchair cage suddenly burst open. There were stewards lying on the floor. There must have been 100-plus people tramping their way through. They just charged in. It was clear they’d deliberately targeted the disabled areas.”
This wasn’t an isolated break-in through the disabled section, though. It was happening all around the ground.
“People were jumping over fences, sprinting into areas they shouldn’t have been,” Matteo says. “I’m sure these people didn’t have tickets. For those who did, you just got swept along it. You just had to move with the crowd. And it escalated closer to the turnstiles.
“We were about to go through but they must have had a problem with one of the gates. We got stopped and you can imagine what it was like. People just pushed forward. That’s when it got really serious. You couldn’t move. I literally couldn’t move my body.
“It was kicking off like you wouldn’t believe. The anger in people was ridiculous. I’ve never seen anything like it. People smacking others around the head because they couldn’t get to where they wanted to be. It was thuggish behaviour and terrible to watch. People were running riot. I was disgusted.
“It felt like if you really wanted to get into that stadium without a ticket, there was a way. It seemed so easy for them. They were coming in from everywhere.”
There are numerous videos on social media of fans forcing their way past police and stewards and breaking into the stadium.
There are also videos of the scenes inside Wembley, where some of those who got through were chased by stewards — and in some cases faced the wrath of their fellow fans.
One video shows some fans inside the stadium setting upon others who appear to have entered illegally. Punches are thrown and one man, in particular, is kicked while lying on the floor.
At regular intervals, one fan can be heard shouting furiously at the stewards, “Do your fucking job” — as if their duties extend to the actions of riot police.
“Once they broke the barriers and got inside, you now had a venue with people who potentially have weapons — which I believe was the case,” one member of Wembley security staff told The Athletic. “It felt like people had forgotten we are in the midst of a pandemic. There was no COVID prevention. It felt like we were left to fend for ourselves. And I don’t think that should be the way we should be made to feel.”
The protocol on the tickets sounded strict, not least with regard to COVID-19.
Ticket-holders aged 11 and above were instructed that they would have to provide either evidence of full vaccination via the NHS phone app or official confirmation of a negative test within the previous 48 hours.
At two other checkpoints, the second one a turnstile, tickets were due to be scanned electronically.
Numerous fans — thousands of them, one official suggests — managed to avoid all of those checks and force their way into the ground.
One criticism regarding Sunday’s security arrangements is that fans without tickets shouldn’t have been allowed to get so close to the stadium itself in the first place. At many showpiece events, such as finals of the Champions League and World Cup, there are ticket checks hundreds of metres from the actual entrances.
According to one England fan who was at Wembley on Sunday with his 79-year-old father, the COVID-19 and ticket checks had been less than rigorous at the match against Germany in the round of 16.
“At the Germany game, they waved people through the COVID check,” the fan says. “I’d set mine up but when I got to the ground, the app wouldn’t load because there was so much (data) traffic. If you just showed your app with the ‘loading screen of death’ to the steward he waved you through.
“With all the media coverage of football matches spreading COVID, I figured they’d be more rigorous this time, so I downloaded the COVID QR code for my phone and my dad’s and I was expecting more of a queue at the final. They were clearly checking the COVID passes and that created a massive queue.”
But that created an opportunity for the jibbers. “As we queued, we could see a group of young men push down a barrier to our right and charge through. There were maybe one or two police nearby but mostly it was Wembley stewards and they were outnumbered.”
UEFA sources have indicated that some England fans forced their way into the section of Wembley reserved for Italy supporters. This would usually create alarm in any case, given the insistence on segregation, but it was particularly concerning given that there had been rigorous efforts taken to try to create a bio-secure “bubble” to keep the visiting Italians away from their English counterparts.
“It was just a really difficult night,” one FA source says. “It felt like the disorder on Wembley Way and Arena Square just spilled over into the stadium.”
Even those up in the VIP seats were not safe.
It was meant to be the proudest night of their lives — the night they watched their son or brother or husband or boyfriend or dad playing in the England men’s team’s first major final in 55 years.
The pride the England players’ families felt on Sunday was immense, despite the unhappy ending on the pitch. But many of them were left shocked, upset and angered by the security breaches and the ugly scenes that followed.
“It was a nightmare, to be honest,” a member of one player’s family says. “It was horrendous. The family and friends felt very very threatened. It was dangerous. There were blokes snatching people’s tickets as they took them out to be read by the barcode reader.
“Hundred stormed the area where we were. I don’t know whether they were organised or just spasmodic groups, but they stormed the area. People were getting knocked over. Women were getting knocked over. They came from nowhere and forced a door open. It was like a battlefield.
“When we got inside, they were in our seats — gangs blocking the aisles, stopping you getting to your seats — and they were intimidating everyone. It was ridiculous. The security wasn’t good enough.”
One player’s family and friends claimed they were racially abused as they left the stadium afterwards. Member of another player’s party suggested they might never go to another match because the experience was so frightening.
Lando Norris, the Formula 1 driver, was reported to have been mugged and had a watch stolen following the match.
Actor Jolyon Rubinstein spoke on Twitter of having been racially abused on the way into the ground. “My shirt has ‘Rubinstein’ on the back,” he said. “I took my coat off & immediately: ‘Are you even from this country’ & ‘he’s a Jew’, followed by laughs & jeers by a group of 6 men in their 50s. I told them that my granddad fought the Nazis. They laughed.”
As for Matteo and his friends, they and others were still outside when the match kicked off at 8pm UK time. The chaos had not subsided.
“I saw young lads crying their eyes out and I saw one woman trying to find her kids,” he says. “They had managed to get through, but she wasn’t allowed because they’d decided that no one else was going in.
“It got to the point where we just had to think about other people and our own safety. It was 8.30pm and we’d still not got in. We asked a police officer, ‘What do we do here?’ The police officer’s advice was just to go home. It wasn’t that easy when I live in Yorkshire.
“We were lucky to flag a taxi because it felt very intimidating all around Wembley. I’ve been to a lot of big games over the years, but that was the first time I’ve felt unsafe. I just thought, ‘I don’t want to be here’.
“I’m just glad that no one got seriously hurt. Some of the scenes I witnessed were horrendous. It was like a war. I’m still in shock about it now, if I’m honest. I felt pretty upset about it at the time and I still do. What’s happened there needs to be investigated fully to make sure nothing like that happens again.”
Mark Bullingham, the FA chief executive, hoped that Monday July 12 would be the ultimate red-letter day, revelling in the glorious aftermath of an England triumph in the European Championship final and a rare opportunity for his organisation to enjoy some praise.
Instead, he found the talk surrounding the final had quickly moved on from the football. England had lost, agonisingly, and the off-the-pitch chaos on Sunday meant the FA board was back in the all-too-familiar scenario of crisis management.
“There were a large number of drunken yobs trying to force their way in,” Bullingham says. “I have to apologise to any fans whose experience was affected and any of the team who had to cope with it.”
England fans inside Wembley Stadium on a night that turned sour (Photo: Carl Recine – Pool/Getty Images)
On the broader subject of whether the FA, which owns Wembley, and the local organising committee could have done more, Bullingham says, “We run a stadium, not a fortress.”
But the FA has long prided itself on the modern Wembley’s reputation as a venue for showpiece events, having been chosen by UEFA to host the Champions League finals of 2011, 2013 and 2024 as well as staging the semi-finals and final of this delayed Euro 2020 tournament.
That reputation took a serious blow on Sunday evening. As an event, it was chaotic — and that with a reduced capacity and with the presence of only a very small number of Italy fans, whose movements into and out of the ground were tightly controlled due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Then there are the numerous questions for Metropolitan Police.
The Athletic asked many of them on Monday, requesting a) a breakdown of the offences, b) details of the number of officers on duty at Wembley at noon, 5pm, 8pm and midnight the previous day, c) information on how its deployment for the final compared to that for the semi-finals, d) estimates for the number of fans in the vicinity of the stadium on Sunday, and e) estimates for the number of fans who got into the stadium without tickets.
In the statement it issued publicly, Scotland Yard said, “A large-scale policing operation was in place across London and at Wembley to ensure that people were able to celebrate the match safely. Crowds gathered from early in the morning to celebrate the match. Overwhelmingly the majority of people were able to watch the match safely.
“Despite appeals not to, a number of people travelled to Wembley who did not have tickets. Officers, including those from the Mounted Branch and the dog unit, worked with Wembley Stadium officials and stewards to respond quickly to any outbreaks of anti-social behaviour and disorder, to ensure those with tickets could access the stadium.
“Just before the match started, a group of people did breach an outer perimeter security cordon and gain entry into the stadium without a ticket. Officers worked quickly to identify these people and to assist with ejecting them from the stadium.”
The FA says, “Security and stewarding numbers for the UEFA Euro 2020 final exceeded the requirements for the match and were greater than any other previous event at Wembley Stadium. However, the behaviour of the people who illegally forced their way into the stadium was unacceptable, dangerous and showed total disregard for the safety and security protocols in place. No steward or security staff should be subjected to this type of behaviour and we thank them for their support on the night. We also apologise to anyone at the match whose experience was affected by this unprecedented level of public disorder.”
Some UEFA executive committee members are certain to have concerns about a stadium that has become their go-to destination for big events over the past decade.
One observer, not linked to UEFA or FIFA, suggested there was “no way” the proposed UK/Irish bid to co-host the 2030 World Cup finals could succeed after a night like that.
Other sources were much more circumspect, saying UEFA were “unlikely to see it as a black mark that can’t be overcome” because there would be a certain amount of understanding over the “unusual circumstances”.
Professor Geoff Pearson, an expert on the policing of football and a senior lecturer on criminal law at the University of Manchester, also pointed to “a combination of highly unusual factors”.
“First, you’ve got the fact people haven’t been able to go to games for 18 months,” he says. “Then you have England’s presence in a major final for the first time in forever. There has also been a build-up of disorder during the COVID-19 period, which we’ve seen erupt at various protests. And finally you’ve got a police force that is completely stretched and has also come in for criticism over its handling of events involving large crowds recently.
“Wembley has a reputation among fans for being a bit of a soft touch. It goes back to the old stadium and stories like the White Horse (1923 FA Cup) Final or those images of Liverpool and Everton fans getting into the 1986 FA Cup final through windows. When I was doing some research on football crowds in 2011, about half a dozen of my research group, who were mainly middle-class blokes, had sneaked into the Champions League final (at Wembley that year: Manchester United) against Barcelona.
“Talk to any fans group that has been to a big game at Wembley and they will tell you similar stories. So, while the mayhem outside the ground and scenes of violence were unprecedented, what happened was not unpredictable. And it will keep happening unless there is a major change to how events at the stadium are managed.”
Ultimately, though, for all the questions about failures of organisation or security, there is one inescapable conclusion: The European Championship final would have passed off peacefully had it not been for some England fans behaving appallingly.
In 2019, the FA ran a social media campaign designed to address a resurgence of misbehaviour among England followers. In the video, an actor plays a drunken fan who throws a bike into a canal, climbs onto a car, chucks beer over a waiter and ends up being branded “a national embarrassment”. “Mate,” a friend quietly tells him. “You’re being an idiot.”
There were chaotic scenes before England vs Italy on Sunday – including in central London’s Leicester Square (Photo: Dave J Hogan/Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
The “Don’t be that idiot” campaign addressed a largely unspoken truth: that England’s fanbase contains a disturbing promotion of people intent on being that idiot. While it is miles away from the violent hooliganism of the 1970s and 1980s, there is a resurgent culture of antagonistic, antisocial behaviour — if indeed it ever went away. A minority, yes, but a depressingly large and loud minority who, at times, ruin it for the rest.
“The culture of excessive drinking, which then, mixed with high emotion, leads to violence, is just part of the psyche of some fans,” says Piara Powar, executive director of the Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE) Network. “What should be a party can turn into an ugly spree of destruction.”
There have been fans on social media saying there was nothing wrong with what happened on Sunday evening: that the long-established tradition of “jibbing” simply reflected a desperation to be in the ground to watch England’s biggest game in 55 years and the COVID-19 restrictions, along with UEFA’s disdainful ticket pricing policy, had meant thousands of loyal fans would otherwise miss out.
The grievance about ticket prices, which were pitched at €945, €545, €295 and €95, is valid. And Professor Pearson is correct when he says the rarity of the occasion — a major final involving England — created an overwhelming desperation to be there, no matter what.
“This tournament felt different,” says Pearson. “It didn’t belong to any one country and you didn’t have large numbers of away fans or even neutral fans. But the behaviour on Sunday night was more like what happens when you see away fans infiltrate home ends. There was a sense that this was a home match for England — and only England supporters were welcome.
“There will be questions asked of the police in terms of what risk assessments they did for the build-up of fans outside the ground and what interventions they made. To police football crowds well, you have to get in there early, work with the supporters and be able to predict what they will do next.
“But we must acknowledge that the police had a very difficult job, as they would have been policing the fan parks, stations, pubs and so on. England games in major tournaments have always posed huge challenges for the police. They’re almost unmanageable.”
“Jibbing” is meant to be harmless. Nobody is meant to get hurt. But the scenes on Sunday were appalling, both inside and outside the stadium, and they could have been far worse.
For the many England fans who despair of the minority that gives them a bad name, it was a sad night for more than just football reasons.
“The footage we’ve all seen and the reports I’ve heard have just left me so despondent,” says one supporter. “It was ugly, disgusting and vile.
“People won’t want to hear it today, but that was not typical of the usual match-going experience in England — the annual arrest statistics bear that out. And that’s what depresses me. We’ll all get lumped in with those thugs.”
The same supporter then lamented the security arrangements, and the way so much pressure was put on the stewards: “And what training are we giving these stewards? As far as I can tell, they give them a high-vis jacket and £8 an hour and then they expect them to be able to police crowds as well as trained officers.”
That downcast Wembley security staff member relates to this sentiment. “It’s undermining the work we put in — the number of injuries that people went home with, the atmosphere of feeling so unsafe, and the racial abuse that began once the penalties ended,” he says.
“This is not acceptable. I felt ashamed to be a British man, to live in England and to see what my nation does once we reach a final. Instead of cheering people on and being united, we have become this disgusting society that jumps to racism towards our own fans and players due to the result of a game.
“All I can say is, if England were to play in another final in England, I believe, for the safety and well-being of my life, I would never do it (work at the game) again.”
