In England this season, the police
have had to deal with a significant esca-
lation in football-related violence and
disorder, with the abuse of Class A
drugs as well as alcohol now a big issue.
As much was highlighted by a report
in The Times in February and the police
say such problems have continued.
That weekend, Nottingham Forest
players were attacked during an FA
Cup game at the City Ground by a
Leicester City fan. Before the end of the
season there were further pitch inva-
sions and yet more attacks. Evident in
February was the emergence of a new,
younger generation who are now caus-
ing trouble at football matches.
Central to the problems the police
encountered in Munich this week was a
younger group of fans, many seemingly
still teenagers, who have inherited the
old songs as well as the desire to engage
in antisocial behaviour.
“I think we’ve seen that today, lots ofvery young groups that maybe we don’t
know, that we haven’t really seen
before,” Lewandowski says. “We’ve
seen that this season — some of these
younger risk groups that are more
problematic for us.”
She makes the point that in Munich it
has been a minority causing the troub-
le. “Lots of England fans have spoken to
me today and said they don’t want to be
associated with this,” she says. “When
you start throwing bottles, smashing
glasses or singing offensive songs, you
can see why the local police want to
deal with it and why the local commu-
nities don’t want it.”
Also in Munich is Mark Roberts, the
chief constable for Cheshire and the
head of the UK’s football policing unit,
funded by the Home Office. They are
here for a number of reasons; not just to
deploy their team of spotters with the
fans but to meet with the other forces to
discuss future tournaments, includingthe 2024 European Championship,
which is being held here in Germany.
Roberts spends his entire evening
following this group of fans, alongside
his team of spotters. “What we saw, as it
progressed through the night, was
people who drank too much, and went
from being noisy to more antisocial,” he
says. “The vast majority of England
fans were just off enjoying the city. But
we had that group who turned their
attention to the German police.
“Making Nazi salutes is clearly
extremely provocative. It’s nothing you
would describe as serious criminality,
but in other countries the police might
have taken a different attitude and
there would have been more arrests.
“The German police were very
measured. The people who got arrested
worked pretty hard to get arrested.”
As Roberts explains, there are conse-
quences. “The problem is that the
minority of 300 can tarnish the localare aware that it may have brought back
particularly painful memories from
your club’s history.”
Oudéa-Castéra has said that an in-
vestigation by the French authorities
would shed light on what happened,
and identify the failures “to make sure
that it will never happen again”.
Nevertheless, Liverpool are under-
stood to be concerned that the sports
minister insists in the letter that the
French authorities still believe “a large
Liverpool still have concerns despite French sports minister’s apology
and hard-to-anticipate number of
counterfeit tickets carried by British
supporters” was the “primary cause of
the incidents” even though she follows
up to admit there were “several
successive failures on our part”.
A 30-page report commissioned by
the French prime minister has accepted
that there were 1,644 fake tickets in the
Liverpool end and only 2,589 in total —
far fewer than Oudéa-Castéra’s initial
claim. The report also blames opera-
tional failures, poor signage and a lack
of information for the mayhem.
Oudéa-Castéra offered to meet Wernerand reiterated that she had asked Uefa
to provide compensation for 2,700
supporters prevented from attending
the match. Uefa has commissioned its
own independent investigation into the
final and faces questions over failures of
its security staff in ensuring the venue
was adequately prepared.
Werner’s letter to Oudéa-Castéra last
week read: “I am writing to you out of
utter disbelief that a minister of the
French government... could make a
series of unproven pronouncements on
a matter of such significance before a
proper, formal and independent in-vestigation process has taken place.
Your comments were irresponsible,
unprofessional and disrespectful to the
thousands of fans harmed physically
and emotionally. I demand an apology
from you and assurance that the
French authorities and Uefa allow an
independent and transparent investi-
gation to proceed.”
The report for the French govern-
ment, by Michel Cadot, who is the
inter-ministerial envoy for the Paris
Olympics, made several recommenda-
tions to prepare for next year’s Rugby
World Cup and the 2024 Games. Hesays fake tickets were a factor but
accepts that tear gas was deployed
“disproportionately in certain cases by
police officers”, with disciplinary
investigations required “to determine
whether they acted within an appropri-
ate framework”.
Steve Rotheram, the metro mayor of
Liverpool, told a French Senate hearing
this week that the police’s claims that
the CCTV footage had been deleted had
echoes of the cover-up that followed the
1989 Hillsborough disaster, where two
CCTV tapes were stolen from the
control room soon after the tragedy.CONTINUED FROM FRONT
Fuelled by alcohol and an equal
measure of foolish bravado, an England
fan, probably in his late teens, decides
that it is time to call it on with the
German police.
The officers have been in Frauen-
platz, in the picturesque centre of
Munich, for a while, watching from a
distance as some three or four hundred
England fans start to go through their
repertoire of all too familiar anthems.
It begins with a few choruses of No
Surrender (to the IRA), which is largely
sung by lads who were probably not
even alive when the Good Friday
Agreement was signed in 1998. Soon,
though, the focus shifts to their polite
German hosts. It is 5pm on a Monday
and Munich is being treated to a
rendition of Ten German Bombers.
One guy, dressed in shorts, T-shirt
and trainers, is front and centre,
initially conducting an oikish English
orchestra but now more interested in
goading the impressively impassive
German officers. He moves towards
them, loads of attitude, still singing the
deeply offensive song in a mindless
attempt to provoke a response.
It is at that precise
moment, however, that an
important intervention
is made. PC Stuart Dick-
erson, one of the UK’s
dedicated football
police officers here as
part of an operation
being conducted in con-
junction with their Ger-
man counterparts, pulls
him to one side.
The British officer is in plain
clothes and has no powers of arrest but
he introduces himself and tells the lad
to calm down, warning him that he is
dangerously close to getting arrested.
For now, at least, the fan seems
prepared to listen. Sometimes such
interventions are effective and Lizzie
Lewandowski, a police sergeant who
works with football clubs across the
West Midlands, explains how both the
UK and the German forces prefer to
employ a “tactical, graduated ap-
proach” that is certainly different from
the policing we saw in Paris before the
Champions League final last month.
Part of that involves inviting the
British officers to communicate any
concerns to England’s fans before the
local police, boosted by the presence of
700 extra officers this week, step in.
“They have encouraged us to go in
first and try to limit the behaviour,”
Lewandowski says. “The arrests we’ve
had are for things that have gone
beyond something we can resolve,
especially the Nazi salutes. But we try to
go in at the lowest level and their
[German] approach absolutely mirrors
what we try to do.”
The British police we are following
for the day are keen to stress that it is a
minority who give them a problem.
More than 4,000 England fans trav-
elled to Munich this week but any
issues — which in the end included 13
arrests for public-order offences, three
of which were for Nazi salutes — were
largely limited to this one group.
The Australian bar they had gath-
ered outside on Monday was meant to
remain open until 1am. But a further
tactic employed by the German
authorities involves shutting the bar
early, on this occasion at 7pm, and
moving fans on. The idea is that the
group reduces in size as the fans go in
search of a new watering hole. Inevita-
bly, the majority regroup, this time out-
side an Irish bar called The Dubliner.
Using flags that identify the English
club team they follow, another small
Munich square is occupied. To begin
with, the atmosphere is fine. But before
long, with more beer consumed,
it again starts to become
unpleasant.
Bars close. Restau-
rants only serve diners
inside. One fan takes
advantage of that by
urinating while seated
at one of the outside
tables, while others
climb on tables belonging
to the Irish bar to deliver
more anti-German songs.
The German police, now
dressed in full riot gear, look on from
either end of the square, while to the side
the UK footballing police officers
observe with their German counter-
parts in plain clothes. When the German
police decide that it is time to shut this
bar too, the tension suddenly rises and
the England fans turn towards them.
Another rendition of Ten German
Bombers begins as the fans edge
forwards. When a bottle is thrown from
the back of the crowd, a British officer
expresses concern that the patience of
the German officers is being severely
tested. But the culprit is quickly arrested
and a surge forward by the riot police
drives the fans back, without the need to
engage in physical confrontation.
Before the night is over, one more bar
is occupied. There is yet more loutish
behaviour, more inappropriate songs.
Soon the police step in again, this time
driving them out across the main
square, Marienplatz, towards the
outskirts of the city centre.Policing England’s travelling
Matt Lawton in Munich is given special
access to see how German and British
officers combined to tackle the louts
12 1GS Saturday June 11 2022 | the times
Sport Football
We need to
give a voice to
decent fans and
marginalise
the idiots