Think hooliganism is in English soccer’s previous?
The sentiment began to crystalise in my mind long before a flying bottle – lobbed, of course, by an English yob not a Spaniard – struck a boy walking near me flush on the knee, as I made my way out of the beery bear-pit officially called the Euros ‘fan zone’.
It started to take shape even before another loutish compatriot sidled up to a friend, who had accompanied me on the drive to Berlin, and tried to steal his mobile phone.
In truth, my hopes that England would beat Spain began to wane much earlier in the afternoon when, with mounting shame and repugnance, I stood among our boozed-up, cannabis-fugged, bare-chested hordes and compared their behaviour with that of the heavily outnumbered Spanish supporters, with whom they had been unadvisedly permitted to mingle.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am as passionate in my support of the national team as the next man. Along with my grandson Joseph, son Daniel, and two friends, I had journeyed for 650 miles and 12 hours praying I might witness England’s finest moment since watching Bobby Moore lift the Jules Rimet trophy on a grainy black and white TV.
Police work to contain a brawl that breaks out in a fan zone in Berlin after the Euro 2024 final
Yet by the time the final whistle ended that dream, I had ceased to care whether we won or lost the game.
For how could I share my joy with the young men all around me, who had thrown their German hosts’ generous hospitality back in their faces by singing moronic songs about Hitler and bombing Berlin – insults that sounded so much more wounding because they were delivered beneath Germany‘s most symbolic national monument, the Brandenburg Gate?
How could I celebrate an England victory with knuckle-dragging goons who still mindlessly chant about not ‘surrendering’ to the IRA? Who think it amusing to scream in the faces of Spanish families, and tell them where they should ‘shove their f***ing tapas’?
Yes, yes, I know. We hear it every time. The thugs are only a small minority. Most English fans are warm, friendly folks. Gracious in defeat, as in victory, they wouldn’t be xenophobic even if they knew what the word meant.
And, yes, by and large that is true. During the weekend, I saw many acts of football fraternalism. Yorkshire lads sparing Spaniards the difficulty of taking a selfie outside the Olympic stadium; Cockneys buying drinks for Madridistas; Brummies bantering with boys from Barcelona.
Whether the idiots comprise five per cent of England’s overseas following or fifteen hardly matters, however. As the most visible and vocal members of our travelling thousands, the damage they inflict on our national reputation far outweighs their numbers. And in that fan zone on Sunday they once again dragged the country they claim to love into the gutter.
By half time, the scenes had turned so ugly that the compere, a genial German who gamely tried to appease the mob by donning a Three Lions jersey and leading a chorus of ‘Eng-er-land’, warned that the screen showing the match would have to be turned off if the fighting didn’t stop. But stop it didn’t, and whether the English were attacking the Spanish or one another didn’t seem to matter.
By full-time, the park was a heaving mass of vacant-eyed, bare-bellied, tattooed aggression. My party didn’t hang around for long, but the teenager was struck by that flying bottle and we saw several stewards and Spanish fans being harangued and set upon.
Safely back at our hotel, we of course conducted a moratorium on the match – concurring that England had been beaten by a superior team: a fact as plain as a pikestaff, even to the most partisan Englishman.
By the time the final whistle ended that dream, I had ceased to care whether we won or lost the game, David Jones writes
Violence breaks out involving England fans in the stands at the final in Berlin
Yet the more difficult conversation centred on the unsavoury characters we had stood among. For how does one explain to one’s football-mad grandson why he was hit by a missile thrown by a supposed comrade, and convince him that, even after a valiant defeat, the trip had been worthwhile?
Indeed, how can anyone explain why, in these supposedly gentler and more enlightened times, the mentality of too many English fans has not moved on since the seventies and eighties, the worst days of hooliganism?
Perhaps the more interesting question, however, is whether this antediluvian element among England’s support can be connected with our persistent failure to win a trophy.
At first blush, it might seem absurd to consider a correlation between the behaviour and performance of the England team. After all, standards of off-field propriety and on-field sportsmanship have been raised to new heights under the stewardship of the upright Gareth Southgate.
As culture, media and sport secretary Lisa Nandy said yesterday, we owe Southgate an enormous debt for creating a team drawn from every community – a team that ‘looks and sounds and feels like modern Britain’.
Back in the UK, a brawl breaks out on a street in Hertford after England’s lost against Spain
We now have socially responsible young stars such as Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka and Phil Foden who would doubtless have been appalled on Sunday had they witnessed the antics of those who laud them with boozy anthems.
And yet, listening to the dimwits directly behind me – two foul-mouthed men from Leeds – perhaps it is not such a ludicrous premise after all.
Their idea of supporting the team was to urge English players to maim or kill their opponents, and they clearly had zero knowledge or interest in the game’s finer points.
Listening to other England fans spouting similarly uninformed nonsense, seemingly regarding the match as a war rather than a contest of intricate strategy and skill, the feeling grew that this pugilistic ignorance somehow seeps into the team’s psyche and drags them down.
I know this is unprovable and it may be wrong. But I would invite cynics to contrast the rabid nonsense I heard being spouted all around me with the far more cerebral – and certainly more joyful – attitude of the Spanish fans.
Given that the English team is blessed with at least as many gifted individual players as Spain, might not the manner in which we approach matters on the pitch be in some way impaired by the panicky aggression, and in some cases stupidity, of our most vociferous supporters?
Whatever the truth, I leave Berlin more confused than ever about what it really means to be an English football fan, and in some ways an Englishman full-stop.
Are we to be forever cast as Neanderthals in overstretched white nylon shirts with three lions covering our cholesterol-clogged hearts? Or can we move with the times, carrying our team of nearly-men with us?
Perhaps, if they can set aside their pints and joints for a moment, the young men who hurled bottles, picked pockets, and abused the pre-match entertainers in the fan park might give that some thought.
Under Southgate, England have undoubtedly come a mighty long way. There is every reason to hope that the shibboleth of being perpetual losers is about to end.
When – please God – that great day comes, wouldn’t it be wonderful if English fans were considered as worthy of success as the players?
