8 2GM Saturday December 4 2021 | the times
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people, as well as police officers, volun-
teers and Wembley staff, creating an
appalling scene of disorder and coming
perilously close to putting lives at risk.”
The lack of alternative venues, in-
cluding fan zones around Wembley to
“soak up” the crowd, was a factor. The
pandemic meant no alternative zones
were provided in places like Hyde Park.
Casey, a crossbench peer, hasMichael Gove has increased the pres-
sure on Lewis Hamilton’s Formula One
team to drop its sponsorship deal with a
firm that made cladding on Grenfell
tower, and issued a threat to ban firms
involved in the disaster from advertising.
Yesterday, the secretary of state for
housing urged Mercedes to drop its
partnership with Kingspan. He said it
ing in a crush and being “trampled un-
derfoot”. Video seen by the review in-
cludes a man carrying a small child
caught up in a crush and falling over,
and separated from two other small
children in the middle of the melee.
Other incidents include a young man
being buried under bodies, suffering a
seizure and falling unconscious.
England’s defeat also resulted in
racist abuse from some inside the sta-
dium as well as on social media aimed
at the three players who had missed
penalties for England, the report added.
“There’s something here about our
national game that seems to be a
vehicle for thuggery, hooliganism and
racism. And I would like to see Euro
Sunday as a turning point. That means
that were we ever to win the World Cup
bid, we would absolutely never see
sights like that again.”
Mark Bullingham, FA chief execu-
tive, apologised for the failures and said
lessons would be learnt. He insisted
Wembley was fit to host events such as
Euro and World Cup finals but said at-
tention needed to be paid to the space
outside the stadium and the placement
of fan zones in other parts of London.
Disorder shows lack of understanding
about threat, leading article, page 33
FA must put fans before broadcasters,
Henry Winter, Sport, page 4A “collective failure” of organisations
involved in planning for the Euro 2020
final at Wembley contributed to the
serious crowd trouble by drunk and
drugged-up fans and might have led to
significant injuries or death, an
independent review has found.
The report by Baroness Casey of
Blackstock also reveals an “appalling
incident” where a ticketless fan imper-
sonated a steward to hijack a disabled
child’s wheelchair and separated him
from his father to trick his way through
a security gate.
Casey found that there were missed
opportunities by all the organisations
involved — including the FA, the
Metropolitan Police and local author-
ities — to deal with the risk of trouble.
Police had decided not to send offi-
cers until 3pm on the day, five hours
before kick-off, by which time thou-
sands of fans had gathered. By the time
the full 550 officers were deployed it
was too late to disperse such large
numbers. The final also exposed weak-
nesses in Wembley’s security operation
and the wider stewarding industry.
There was a “perfect storm” of condi-
tions, including the pandemic, which
led to thousands of empty seats in the
stadium, and a series of “near misses”
that could have led to people suffering
serious injury or worse.
About 2,000 ticketless fans
forced their way into Wembley
by tailgating people with tickets
or by taking part in 17 mass
breaches of disabled access
gates and emergency fire doors
which “jeopardised the safety
and security of many legitimate
supporters and staff”, says the
report. About 400 were ejected.
An England victory against
Italy in the penalty shoot-out
“would have created a further
huge public safety risk, with up to
6,000 ticketless fans waiting to
storm the stadium at the same
time as doors were being opened
to allow other fans to leave”. The
report says: “There was a collec-
tive failure by organisations in-
volved in planning the final to rig-
orously assess and mitigate the foresee-
able risk of the scale of ticketless fans
gathering at Wembley.”
After it was published, Casey said the
collective failures should not disguise
the fact that thousands of fans behaved
disgracefully. “The Euro 2020 final was
a potentially glorious national occasion
that turned into a day of national
shame,” she said. “Our team of role
models were in our first major final for
55 years. However they were let down
by a horde of ticketless, drunken and
drugged-up thugs who chose to abuse
innocent, vulnerable and disabled
recommended that:
6 The FA lead a national cam-
paign to bring about a sea-
change in attitudes towards
fan behaviour.
6 The government consider a
new category for football
matches of national signifi-
cance and tells the Sports
Grounds Safety Authority
(SGSA) to work with the FA
to review stewarding.
6 The SGSA, the events in-
dustry, the police and local
government agree on a way
forward to decide on who is
accountable for “Zone Ex”
— the area of public space out-
side the stadium used by supporters.
6 Tougher penalties should apply for
football-related disorder.
6 A more comprehensive approach
between Wembley and the Metro-
politan Police should be taken to man-
age public safety.
Although there were 1,900 stewards
on duty, 30 to 40 per cent of staff had
either not worked at Wembley before
or had done no stewarding of football
matches before the start of the tourna-
ment, partly as a result of the pandemic.
CCTV video showed multiple inci-
dents in which people were seriously at
risk, with many, including children, fall-Fan hijacked boy’s wheelchair to
dupe stewards in Wembley chaos
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i
It was only luck that nobody was
killed or badly injured in the disorder
at the Euro 2020 final between
England and Italy, a review foundLEE SMITH/ACTION IMAGES VIA REUTERS
Martyn Ziegler, Matt Lawton
Lampard to
fight driving
charge after
cyclist’s claim
Ross KaniukThe former Chelsea manager Frank
Lampard faces a criminal trial for alle-
gedly driving while on the phone after
he was reported by a cyclist who has
previously caught the boxer Chris Eub-
ank and the film director Guy Ritchie.
Mike Van Erp claims he saw Lam-
pard talking on a phone and clutching a
cup of coffee, as he controlled the steer-
ing wheel of his Mercedes with his
wrist, while sat in traffic in south Ken-
sington, central London.
The cyclist filmed Lampard on April
27 and sent the video to police, saying
he was “pretty disgusted” with the
former England player’s driving,
according to the Evening Standard.
Lampard, 43, has now been charged
with driving while using a mobile
phone. He denies the offence and has
hired the law firm of Nick Freeman,
who has earned the nickname Mr
Loophole for his success in achieving
acquittals in driving cases.
Van Erp uses a helmet-mountedGoPro camera and regularly hands over
dossiers of evidence against motorists he
thinks have broken the law.
This year he was behind the prosecu-
tion of Eubank, 55, the former world
champion, who was caught running a
red light in his Rolls-Royce convertible.
Last year he reported Ritchie, 53, for
driving while using his phone, landing
the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Bar-
rels director with a six-month ban.
In written evidence to Bromley
magistrates’ court, Van Erp described
the incident with Lampard. “I noticed
this driver of a black Mercedes 4x
holding a coffee in his right hand, and a
phone in his left,” he said. “I could see
him talking on the phone... whilst rest-
ing his right inside wrist on the steering
wheel.”
The Metropolitan Police said that
Lampard admitted being behind the
wheel and was offered a fixed-penalty
notice but chose not to pay it. He has
been charged with “using a handheld
mobile phone/device while driving a
motor vehicle on a road”. A letter from
Freeman & Co said Lampard denies the
charge and intends to fight the case.
A magistrate, sitting in private in the
single justice procedure, adjourned
Lampard’s case this week for a trial at
City of London magistrates’ court on
January 17.Frank Lampard
chose not to pay
a fixed penalty,
a court was toldFormula 1 row leaves Grenfell firms facing advertising ban
Tom Ball
Rebecca Clancy
Motor Racing Correspondent
George Grylls Political Reporter
would “undermine all the good work
the company and sport have done”.
The public inquiry into the disaster
has heard that Kingspan used plastic
foam boards that burnt “like a raging
inferno” and that executives dismissed
customers’ safety concerns.
The company’s branding will be on
the nose of Hamilton’s car at Sunday’s
Saudi Arabia Grand Prix.
In a letter to the Mercedes-AMG Pe-
tronas F1 team, for whom Hamilton is
the lead driver, Gove issued a thinly
veiled threat that parliament couldmove to prevent firms such as King-
span from advertising.
“I am conscious that there
are very real questions
about whether parlia-
ment would support a
statutory regime that
enabled a core partici-
pant in a public inquiry
into how 72 people lost
their lives to advertise its
products publicly to mil-
lions of families across the
country,” he said.Grenfell United, a group that repre-
sents survivors and bereaved
families, said it was “truly
shocking”.
Hamilton has previous-
ly voiced his support for
Grenfell survivors and
called for justice to be
served over the disaster.
He has not commented
on the sponsorship deal.Toto Wolff, team principal of the
Mercedes F1 team, apologised for the
“additional hurt” caused by the deal,
However, he did not indicate that the
partnership with Kingspan would be
dropped.
He said Mercedes had engaged with
the company “in depth” prior to the deal
and was assured it had no role in the de-
sign or construction of the cladding.
Kingspan said it had no role in the de-
sign of the cladding on Grenfell Tower,
where its K15 product constituted
about 5 per cent of the insulation.The logo will be on the nose
of Mercedes’s cars tomorrowere
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