Football Hooliganism Rears Its Ugly Head Again at Euro 2016

A hundred and sixteen people were arrested for misconduct with 63 still held in prison and the rest released.

Football hooliganism has been making a comeback at the European Championship, and is challenging French authorities who have struggled to deal with the sudden surge in violence.

England and Russia were threatened with expulsion from Euro 2016 by UEFA (Union of European Football Association) on Sunday if there is further violence from their fans during the tournament. Clashes between English and Russian hooligans escalated over three days in the centre of Marseille before vicious fighting spread to the stadium on Saturday.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that 116 people had been arrested since Friday in incidents connected to the tournament, with 63 of them still being held in prison and the rest released. Three people had been expelled from France and five others barred from entering France.

UEFA acknowledged there were “segregation issues” at the Stade Velodrome where Russia and England drew 1-1 and said it “will implement corrective measures to strengthen the deployment of security personnel at stadiums, in close collaboration with local authorities.”

UEFA expressed its “utter disgust” about the running battles involving the English, Russians and locals that started Thursday in the centre of the Mediterranean port city. Russia has been charged by UEFA over crowd disturbances, racist behaviour by fans and the setting off of fireworks at the game. UEFA’s disciplinary body will judge the case on Tuesday.

After an emergency meeting on Sunday, the UEFA executive committee warned both football associations that “irrespective of any decisions taken by the independent disciplinary bodies relating to incidents inside the stadium, will not hesitate to impose additional sanctions on the Football Association and the Russian Football Union, including the potential disqualification of their respective teams from the tournament, should such violence occur again.”

The location of Russia’s next fixture poses another challenge for authorities as Lille is 30 kilometers (20 miles) from tiny Lens, where England plays Wales on Thursday.

Lille also has a direct rail link to London so there could be a large number of fans from all four Group B nations converging on the city.

We suppose that we will have a lot of agitation in Lille on Wednesday and Thursday.

Philippe Malizard, Local Official

Lille will initially be reinforced with an extra company of 80 riot police officers, Malizard said, on top of the 480 police officers and eight companies of riot police already planned for match days.

The difficulty now is that everywhere England goes in France there will be expectations of violence and that will feed into a hostile environment around England fans, which exacerbates the violence.

Prof Clifford Stott, Expert in Hooliganism

Stott, of England’s Keele University, said tactics deployed by Marseille authorities were “escalatory,” claiming that early intervention on Thursday could have quickly quelled the disorder. Tear gas was fired at the first sight of mass disorder and water cannons were later deployed.

Exacerbating the problems for UEFA is the fact the locations for matches in each group are selected before the random draw to pick out the four teams.

A person with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press that UEFA will look to implement changes to allow them to select venues after the championship draw or switch locations based on team size or safety considerations. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because UEFA is yet to change its regulations.