It didnt take them long - Fans fighting.

spengos said:
This all seems a little odd if you think about it. We haven't seen this kind of thing from England fans for many years. There have been small incidents but nothing like this. I've seen reports stating that witnesses have seen gangs of Russians wandering around looking for English fans to attack. Also more reports stating Russian Ultras threatened there would be violence before the tournament started.

Seems to me like the Russian fans started all this and English fans have retaliated, but at the same time clashing with the Police. Making them look like they started it all.

Don't get me wrong, the England fans bring it on themselves, but I do think they've been antagonised into it.

They're fighting a losing battle against those Ruski's though.
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They will never back down, you just know they wont.
 
Those Russians are ruthless, usually its a lot of shouting and throwing things at each other but the ruskies just walk through destroying anything in front of them. That clip of the bloke being hit round the head with a chair :eek: ouch

Also comparing Welsh fans to England fans isn't exactly the same is it, no disrespect to Wales but most of the other countries won't know who you are / what the flag represents whereas the English fans seem to be hunted out.

Not saying the England fans are blame free, clearly they aren't but its not all one sided.
 
I know a few who have been there since Tuesday, this is what he has said.


Travelling back to Toulon, the fighting that has taken place tonight was orchestrated and the French police did not have a clue other than to react when the English fans reacted. The harbour has been laid siege to by the ultra and Russian fans from every alley conceivable, whilst the French police penned the English to the waterfront, France hold your head in shame, your policing was appalling, your planning was ill conceived and your implementation was inadequate to say the least. England fans done themselves proud, stood and held themselves to account at every turn.

2 of the lads who have tickets were hiding in a back room for the last few hours.
 
Diddums said:
Cheers. As someone who has never followed footy, I have no context here.

How bad is this really? Does this happen a lot? I know that hooligans pop up every now and then in the news but are most football tournaments much better than this?

Also, good luck to the French police force. Those poor guys are still coming to terms with a massive terrorist attack and now they've got these brainless idiots to deal with.

They're in a really crap place right now :(
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I started going to football in the early '90s - just as the era of the hooligan was drawing to a close. Saw a few fights outside the grounds but never anything like the scenes in Marseilles - but then you wouldn't in England. Worst incident I experienced was a Stoke, when they scored a hail of coins was thrown into our end, and there was a bit of a ruck at the station afterwards - police had to separate the fans. Then again in Stoke, this time at Port Vale a handful of youths tried to gain entry to our coach as we were driving away from the ground. That's just comical stuff really though looking back - the club I followed never really had a firm and I wasn't interested in fighting at all.

I doubt you'll see anything like that at a game in England these days. There was a BBC3 documentary a while ago - it was following the so-called "new generation" of football hooligans, trying to make them seem really dangerous. They weren't, they were a rather sad bunch of awkward teenagers trying and failing to re-create a bygone era. If any of them kicked off at a match then they just got banned from going to football. One of them was a Man City fan, he tried to arrange a ruck away from the ground with West Ham. So he rang a number he'd been given, the bloke said they'd be waiting for them at Stockport station, so four Man City "youth" got in an old Ford Fiesta and drove to Stockport - no-one was there of course.
 
And that's the real problem now, a lot of Ultras see our hooligans of the 70s/80s as the founders of what they do and they openly admit that, they have just taken it to a higher more dangerous level. So when they get the chance they want to test them selves against us, problem being is that its largely been stamped out here and what is left are slightly angry teens trying to act tough as scorza mentioned. ( Also these groups are not your normal drunk groups on a Saturday night so you cant really compare them).
 
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Russian fans chasing England fans at the end. Segregation is awful. I think it's time for the media to stop laying all the blame at our door.
 
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