2000 party
Neal Collins SOCCER
Shortly after England had been knocked out of Euro 2000 in Belgium on Tuesday night, the BBC screened a documentary detailing the violence which had taken place in Brussels and Charleroi last weekend.
At one point England’s finest young men, tattooed, earringed, drunk and overweight, were goading the Belgian police: “Who won the war, eh? Who won the fucking war?”
And for the life of me I couldn’t imagine that particular bunch of mutants, handcuffed and on their way home in disgrace, serving their country in 1916, 1945 or at any time in the future.
These are the lowest of the low. They wouldn’t get anywhere near the British army or any other. And from what we saw they wouldn’t want to go near a real war, where the other side are armed.
This is the British army of the right, the rat pack which marches on the innocent, the unarmed, the unprotected. In fact, they’re so pro-British they give Nazi salutes.
These are the cowardly bigots who pick on minorities, who seek out the weak to give their own lives meaning, to protect their place in society because they’re down there with the cockroaches.
While England agonises over how many foreign asylum-seekers are entering the country, it is unable to prevent the worst of its populace from leaving its shores. Personally, I’d rather share my pub with asylum seekers from Uranus than the English-born-and-bred dregs we saw in action last night.
And for the first time, around an hour after watching the Romanian penalty which put England out of Euro 2000, I felt a sense of relief. Gone was the agony, the disappointment, the irrational anger towards Phil Neville.
Instead, watching the scenes in Brussels and Charleroi, there was only a surge of relief. English people, bearing the cross of St George and chanting racist abuse, will no longer have the excuse to tear foreign towns apart this weekend.
When the quarterfinal against Italy is played in Brussels on Saturday night, it will be peaceful; passionate but violence-free. Because Romania, and not England, will be there to contest the game.
Back home of course, Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, claim that most of the troublemakers are “unknown to any intelligence officers”, but the truth is, many of the louts featured on Panorama were precisely the kind of people denied passports by the German authorities this month: real, died-in-the-wool, racist, violent scumbags.
The Labour Party spin doctors claim that many of those arrested and sent home had no criminal records, that they were lawyers and engineers. In truth, as I understand it, only a couple of professionals were arrested, one in four had “previous” and most were just the same, sad, drunken, racist bastards who regularly wreck their own home towns when they’re not out destroying England’s reputation on the continent.
They shouldn’t be allowed out of our country to wreak havoc, to victimise innocent, defenceless people. What about their civil liberties? What about their rights? Stuff them.
When there’s football abroad, let’s lock this lot away. And, hey, who cares if we lose the key?
Okay, the Turks, a community about 400 000 strong in Belgium, retaliated. In fact, after their victory over Belgium, it was the Turks who were the troublemakers. They too deserve censure, even the threat of expulsion. That Galatasaray went unpunished after the deaths of two Leeds fans in Istanbul is ridiculous. And Uefa’s criminal lack of action over those deaths has come back to haunt them.
But that doesn’t make English fans’ behaviour any more acceptable. Having seen the scenes up close on the Panorama cameras, I can only feel shame. And relief that England are out. I sincerely hope the police were watching Panorama. And that they use the footage to arrest the lot of them.
How many innocent people were dragged from their cars and beaten for the crime of being dark and therefore possibly Turkish? How many were punched, glassed, knocked down, just for being there?
One of my colleagues in Brussels described to me how one young French girl, waving her flag after her nation’s second victory, committed the crime of yelling “Vive la France” as her dad drove past a pub full of Englishmen.
One of them hurled a glass, which gashed her face and left her in hospital. She was 12. The English fans cheered.
It’s time for the English government to act. Time to stop these people from leaving England’s shores. Time to stop these people from leaving the cells where they belong.
ENDS