Fanatical football game fans12/30/2023 ![]() They put a tank in the square – a tank! They had no confidence in their ability to deal with it.” The arrival of the England fans was met with the same precautions as might be deployed to counter an incursionary force. It was scary – they had no sense of limits. “The English police know what they’re doing and they proceed without liberal platitudes,” Buford recalls. ![]() ![]() So was I, for that matter, but this time I was able to keep clear of everything except bad vibes – oh, and a bottle that was chucked at our car on the autostrada: a GB plate not being the best disguise. He was there at the sharp end of the trouble in Turin. It was xenophobic, violent and with a quality of loathing. “The England fans were a rougher crowd than club fans,” he says. When we speak, he puts his success at penetrating the closed society of the hardcore element down to, “the fact that I am American, and the flexibility of my bladder”. The American writer Bill Buford travelled with England fans to the World Cup of 1990 in the course of researching his excellent book Among The Thugs. It was scary – they put a tank in the square – a tank!” I marched with another small minority to the stadium in Sunderland to watch England play Turkey: “I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk – yes I would!” I didn’t mention this when I met the future Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk when I was in Istanbul for the reverse fixture later that year. Many, many times I’ve heard them shout – in between “God save the Queen” and “Send her victorious” – “No surrender!” Meaning, no surrender to the IRA. I’ve been with other small minorities before and since that happy day. Like the small minority that voted against Brexit, I suppose. It’s worse when you read the sports pages the following morning: ‘A small minority of England fans…’ Yeah, right. Is it its belligerent, jingoistic history? Its imperial heritage? Its supporters and their downright antisocial behaviour? What dreadful things does it say about the English, that some English people must celebrate their Englishness in such a way? Is that why everyone hates them? And let’s not fool ourselves on this: everyone does hate them.įrom Latin America and Australasia to most of Europe, Russia and even its neighbours in the home nations – England is universally despised. It’s been a matter of national anguish for years. MORE: The science behind why ‘Three Lions’ is the perfect World Cup song I reached the bus entire myself, just about, took out pen and notebook and began to write. Those that landed entire made the return journey. These they threw back – on a high, mortar-bomb trajectory – as we made our way to the buses. ![]() But when we left the stadium, we found the citizens of Marseilles had thoughtfully collected the beer bottles abandoned by England fans. England beat Tunisia 2-0 – goals from Alan Shearer and Paul Scholes, since you ask. At last the match started, and everything calmed down. The choir, reddened and maddened by sun and beer, sang:įollowed by more traditional chants celebrating England as a trisyllabic nation. The tune was Go West, a disco hit by Village People recently given a new lease of life by the aptly named Pet Shop Boys. There comes a point during the consumption of alcohol when speech is no longer practicable. Outside the Stade Vélodrome – odd name for a football stadium – the streets were filled with the shirtless. Now – had I landed on a snake? – the newspaper I worked for was sending me to Marseilles, travelling with the fans for England’s opener against Tunisia in the 1998 World Cup. There had been 50 arrests overnight, mostly England football fans. That’s what the newspapers said on the day of the match, though you’d never get next door’s cat behaving like that.
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