Probably not the best idea to get personal.
Violence in France
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According to Sébastien Louis this expert on hooliganism on the ground there, the core of the Russian hooligans there to cause trouble do train in MMA and martial arts and the Russian secret service use them as enforcers at times.
It is you who are naive if you think that this lot won't cause trouble at the WC.
It's always easier to control hoodlums in your own country than when they go abroad, especially when the police abroad is doing such a piss poor job of keeping them under control. But I forgot that all Russians are knife wielding thugs, I'm sure Putin himself will lead the charge on his armored destrier as the hooligans charge towards innocent fans.
The Russian government will move heaven and earth to make sure Russia looks like heaven on earth, these tournaments are holy grails of pr and propaganda.
I didn't insult anybody, did I? Which is something you cannot say about the whole bunch of posters here who crossed the line quite a number of times when it comes to bashing one particular country and its citizens.
You got personal. Maybe not deliberately insulting, but still personal.
Whereas, as you say, other posters havent been getting personal, instead just nation bashing.
I'm afraid that with a significant number of of posters from a certain country you won't be getting a particularly objective view of what's been happening specifically with regards to English football fans.
I'm Manchester Irish so I can state that
Some pretty hard-line stereotyping going on in here, as is human nature I guess.
Its obviously neither fair nor logical to paint all Russians as arrogant, aggressive, mindless thugs based on the actions of these few idiots. But that's not to say the violence, coupled with the comments coming from what I gather is a pretty well-known politician are not a cause for major concern. Seems like a slightly warped mentality that, but I'm guessing this guy is just a bit of a mental outlier, rather than a core voice in Russian politics ? Don't know nearly enough about it to comment really.
What's really annoying me is the vilification of English fans on the whole in ley-terms (at least from what I've seen here in Wales). Nearly everyone I've spoken to it about seems to view this as the English 'Getting up to their old tricks again', which from the evidence I've seen doesn't seem to be the case.
Overall I just feel sorry for the clusterfeck that this tournament is becoming. HopING against hope the police pull their finger out and sort this out before it escalates any further.
Its obviously neither fair nor logical to paint all Russians as arrogant, aggressive, mindless thugs based on the actions of these few idiots. But that's not to say the violence, coupled with the comments coming from what I gather is a pretty well-known politician are not a cause for major concern. Seems like a slightly warped mentality that, but I'm guessing this guy is just a bit of a mental outlier, rather than a core voice in Russian politics ? Don't know nearly enough about it to comment really.
What's really annoying me is the vilification of English fans on the whole in ley-terms (at least from what I've seen here in Wales). Nearly everyone I've spoken to it about seems to view this as the English 'Getting up to their old tricks again', which from the evidence I've seen doesn't seem to be the case.
Overall I just feel sorry for the clusterfeck that this tournament is becoming. HopING against hope the police pull their finger out and sort this out before it escalates any further.
English fans caused 3 nights of carnage before the day of the game which everyone seems to have forgotten. Victims me hole.
No apparently that was all the French locals
The English are 100% innocent we are being told and are only being blamed due to their bad reputation in the the past,
Nobody's forgotten anything but it's news to me that England fans were causing trouble on the Wednesday night as well, given that the first reports of any violence came about on Thursday and were, by most impartial accounts, instigated by locals.
Unfortunately the rivalry between England and the home nations is strong. I can see the Welsh siding with the Russians......
The citizens part of it is certainly over the line, and unquestionably wrong headed and unfortunate. It's hard to say the same about the county part though, as every single official quote from a Russian authority about these incidents has been nothing short of disgraceful. Way further over the line, in fact, than some stupid online xenophobia, and veering dangerously toward outright official provocation and whole hearted endorsement of further violence... Violence I, and people I know are in very real danger of getting caught up in. Not to mention that a large contributing factor to all this has been the Russian government's refusal to co-operate fully with French authorities in identifying trouble makers, like every other country has.
So while yes, treating Russian people as anything other than differing individuals is patently bullshit, forgive me if I don't tip toe as politely around their sensitivity towards the country itself (in an official capacity) which has so far proved itself to be nothing less than a complete and utter clusterfeck of shithouses.
We won't need to, if Rooney's in midfield.
Well allegedly they moved heaven and earth for a few FIFA officials in order to host the thing.
Can't see that myself. While rivalry is very real between us we would stick together if the ruskies came causing issues. Was on holiday with the lads had a massive 3 way game of football English Wales and the Scots. Some great songs from all 3 sides and some tasty challenges but off to the bar after.
Irrelevant to my point, but I guess you just had to bring it up again. It's like a reflex.
This was the only check to get in. A fat bloke in a high vis giving a half hearted pat down.
I took these to reassure my over-worrying girlfriend I'd be safe... Didn't send them to her in the end.
Not much less than you'd expect on an average weekend, but significantly less than you would for most finals or tournaments, and very weak given the context of the game, not to mentioned the terror-tinged climate of the tournament.
Was there not a line of police like this between the fans in the stadium?
According to the reporters on BBC and SKY the Russians are after the Welsh as well, apparently they see little difference and see it at the UK rather than individual nations. They have also apparently uncovered or heard that the Russians wish to target the Welsh as well.
Nope. Just a few rows of empty seats which people ended up sitting in anyway.
Was there not a line of police like this between the fans in the stadium?
I didn't even get a fat bloke giving me a half arsed pat down. I got a skinny french kid who looked about 16. If a big feck off Russian bloke had wanted to bring a firework or worse into the stadium, there's no way that guy was telling him otherwise.
No. There were a few of those same stewards at one point. But I think even they thinned out, and didn't do anything anyway.Tweet
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Jesus that's really quite worrying. In the footage with fans jumping over barriers to get away was there kids/families there as well?
Listen mate, I wouldn't bother trying to reason your point, there's too many with agendas posting on here who won't have any sort of mitigation where England are concerned.
If they were that concerned about PR they would have made an effort to stop their ultras travelling to France and their MP's wouldn't be tweeting stuff like “I don’t see anything wrong with the fans fighting. Quite the opposite, well done lads, keep it up!”
How how how did they think that was going to be okay?
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They were volunteers there to help people know where they were sitting etc. We spoke to one for a bit. A few people came to them claiming of being attacked/hit near the end and they had no idea what to do. They just told them to go and find somewhere else to sit.
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I don't think they'd really thought about it... Somehow. Perhaps they were too busy focusing on terrorism to worry about crowd violence? That's possibly the most comforting, albeit not-actually-at-all reasoning I can think of.
Yeah, those Batmen I took a pic of before we went in were the last evidence of any police presence in or near the ground. I hadn't really thought about it until we were trying leave in as respectable a speed walk as possible.
Meanwhile, in Paris...
Your point included the statement that these tournaments to the Russians are holy grails of pr and propaganda. Propaganda being the art of manipulating the truth to make something look better than it really is. Do you not then think that it is despicable that the Russian government apparently condones their thugs when they cause mayhem elsewhere but, as you intimate, will stomp all over them if they step out of line in 2018? I was merely suggesting that such moral inconsistency could in fact be construed as being consistent with a government having no qualms whatsoever about bribing their way into the competition.
Wow. I like the idea of some eutopia where all fans can sit together but bearing in mind all the trouble before how hard would it have been to have a home/away section with a line of police in between?
Tossers! Pestering the locals
Never said that they are "holgy grails to the russians". These tournaments are PR instruments for the hosting nation, obviously. Always have been (Berlin 1936 comes to mind), always will be. The fact you can't gather that from what I said and just read selectively tells me it's pointless to go on discussing it.
The French, btw., have done a horrible job capitalizing on the PR opportunity. Can't control the hools and, judging by Mockney's picture, treat the security before those matches as if it was some third league sunday match. No wonder these scumbags got a fecking flare gun into the stadium.
That's the thing. Sometimes you actively want that. In both Poland/Ukraine and Brazil there were a couple of very laxly policed games (Sweden* & Costa Rica) which actually suited me, as I could wander around to the bigger England section and loiter on the stairs. Sometimes though, like when you've got two famously volatile fanbases in a table top night game in a city rife with hooliganism, in a country on high terrorist alert, you'd ideally like some decent security.
* Oddly, the Sweden game was massively policed in the city centre, riot shields and all, but we were left complerely to our own devices whilst in the ground!
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I think its two-fold - but this is my own personal opinion only.
1) Complacency combined with self-fulfilling prophecy. We've avoided trouble in the last couple of tournaments and a lot of years have passed before English fans have been widely regarded to have caused mass trouble on the continent like they used to do. The emphasis has been on foreign "Ultras" more recently. It seems the French have considered the problem to have been solved, and if the English wanted to get fighty then they'd be there to crack some skulls (i.e. a reactive rather than a pro-active attempt at riot policing). They haven't seemingly adopted the methods used widely in the UK and in Germany during the World Cup there - to help create a trust and friendly atmopshere between fans and police by getting the police in and amongst the fans - visible, but friendly, rather than standing in riot gear by their vans looking hard and ready for a fight (i.e. adding fuel to the flames and adding to the tension rather than defusing it) - as well as having the spotters find troublemakers early and separate and remove them from the area early. The French attitude is that the English are troublemaking drunks, they will cause trouble and they'll be ready for it and go and kick em in when they start. In some ways they are right - the English will cause trouble - if you let them. If you don't cancel known troublemakers passports, id and eject the troublemaker ringleaders and stand off them looking like youre ready to fight them whilst they spend all day getting wasted in the sun, they will start a riot. Half the battle is pro-actively preventing this sort of behaviour by cleverly shaping their "choice-architecture" so they think to do something else.
2) Looking at that picture - I can't help feeling they might have known it wasn't going to be ok. But if the Russian and Rosbif hooligans want to go at it whose business is it eh?
By whom and where? Because it's not in this thread.
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Unbelievable.http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8a991946-315e-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153.html#axzz4BOERtGci
Not that evidence has ever stopped the state media before, but glorifying the hooligans as if they were some brave champions of "Real Russians" is irresponsible.
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That isn't true as UEFA had England - Russia on a list of 5 games at high risk of fan violence.
I have no problem with people bashing the Russian government and its actions when warranted and they do deserve a lot of criticism. My problem is that those type of discussions inevitably develop into something far more sinister and disgusting. As far as the official quotes from a Russian authority, here's yesterday's official statement from the the Football Union of Russia http://en.rfs.ru/main/news/ct137/77299.html
Doubt it would make any difference to the troublemakers, but there you go.
Policing is crucial as is cross border cooperation between the relevant authorities. Somone earlier referenced Lansdowne Road 1995 - the riot there would probably have been prevented if the Irish garda had accepted assistance in policing the event from the English.
The Russian hooligan culture is known to be active right now and the England game vs Russia was flagged as high risk as a result. The policing looks woefully inadequate.
Mutko originally denied there were any clashes in the stadium. The statement came after Russia was threatened with expulsion from the tournament because they couldn't be seen to do nothing.
http://www.espnfc.us/russia/story/2...ames-weak-security-for-fan-clash-in-marseille