BerwickMad Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 David Davis has said today that English football fans could recieve an award from UEFA for their brilliant support in Portugal this summer. Well deserved I feel. The English outnumbered all other nations during the championships and behaved brilliantly. The games in which England were involved produced proberbly the games with the best atmosphere in the tournament. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igor Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 I seem to remember some 'fans' being deported and jailed for fighting??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BerwickMad Posted July 2, 2004 Author Share Posted July 2, 2004 Yes. I was in Albufeira and saw it all start on the first night of violence. These people werent football fans and were just thugs and scum who traveled to Portugal with the sole purpose of causing trouble. They were English, but certainly werent football fans. Thankfully, i learned my leason from the Monday night, and spent the rest of the week down in the Old Town, where the pubs were better and all teams mingled and enjoyed themselves. All the real English fans went here and not "the strip". Anyone arrested in the strip, on the nights following the monday, had no excuses as far as im concerned. I dont care if they claim they didnt do anything. Why would they go to the strip if they didnt want bother? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
igor Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 Unfortunatley it seems there are always moronic minority's who try to spoil things for everyone else, hopefully they will get sorted out in jail, a few months of the old mutton dagger will have them walking like John Wayne and talking like Michael Jackson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest _annan_ Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 The English Disease Beneath the beer-fuelled belligerence of our soccer fans lie deeper, darker reasons for discontent Mary Riddell Sunday June 20, 2004 The Observer Nothing much happens in Boston, Lincolnshire. I know that because I grew up there and worked as a reporter for the local weekly, compiling wedding reports and writing captions to pictures of amusingly shaped marrows. The only noteworthy event I can recall was the day when the newspaper's own offices were accidentally burnt down during the demolition of an ancient printing press. Last Sunday night, soon after England lost to France in the first round of Euro 2004, Boston was ablaze again. Two police cars were overturned and torched, Threshers off-licence was set alight, and a gang of 70 men rampaged through one of the quietest small market towns in England. Store fronts were vandalised, and the contents looted. Not since Anderson of the Fens led the anti-enclosure riots in the 17th century had the rural east of England seen such aggression. 'They even smashed the charity shop windows,' my mother said. Next day, in Albufeira, a more familiar spectacle was taking place: 250 England fans yelled insults at the Germans and taunted black Portuguese bystanders prior to pelting riot police with bottles. So far, so normal, except for the names on the charge sheet. Those accused of involvement in drunken violence included the grandson of a police chief, the son of a catering boss and the child of an Oxford don. England, the Daily Mail reported, has been 'shamed by the middle-class yobs'. Actually, the middle classes are accomplished law-breakers, albeit mainly of the white-collar type. Whipping up hatred, against witches, paedophiles or fellow contestants in the Big Brother house, has never been the sole province of the lowest socio-economic orders. Nor are the two top Aslef executives caught brawling at a barbecue classifiable as social plankton. Even so, the spectre of professors emeritus of Sanskrit legless on Super Bock and trashing seafront bars evokes one of JG Ballard's futuristic nightmares. The mob, it seems, has been democratised. Away from the Portuguese police cells, other barriers of class and sport are breaking down. Wayne Rooney, an authentic working-class hero, replaces the dandified Beckham as the national idol, and Royal Ascot, once a toffs' stronghold, is thick with hats from Accessorize, the scent of frying onions and tanked-up merchant bankers on the pull. A Pimm's proletariat has emerged, while genteel lager-swillers form the new yobbocracy. Eager to dispel such notions, some commentators are shoring up old stereotypes. At least two pundits have argued that soccer hooligans are the product of Britain's Industrial Revolution, when all that sweaty manual work forced labourers to hang around in ale-houses instead of going home for their tea. If such theorists read Emile Zola's Germinal, they might realise that other 19th-century Europeans survived workplaces less fragrant than, say, the offices of Vogue without spawning tribes of tin-bath thickos hot-wired for mayhem. There is another view, advanced by Cliff Stott, a psychologist and police adviser currently observing events in Portugal. He thinks that outside threats, such as officers with truncheons, are perceived as a challenge to English maleness. That, in turn, converts a group of hardcore troublemakers and ordinary drunks into a battleforce. Dr Stott's research is persuasive. It introduces the issue of identity. It allows for the rise of the posh thug in Albufeira. But it does not wholly explain events in Boston, Lincs, where you are as likely to see a riot cop as to clap eyes on Brad Pitt. Other hotspots of UK soccer trouble have their own chronicles. This is Boston's backdrop to a riot. Old industries have died gradually and sink estates grown up. But the climate of unrest solidified quite recently, when immigrant workers arrived to do tough, poorly paid agricultural work, such as potato picking. Though locals do not want their jobs, some bitterly resent their presence. The incomers live and work legitimately, but a core of residents will not, or cannot, distinguish them from the bogus asylum seekers of whom they are always reading. According to a senior professional in the town, the football was just a catalyst for latent violence. Obviously, the proximate cause of soccer fights, and most other brawls, is binge-drinking. Again, that is a symptom. Hand-wringing over how to curb the British disease tends not to address the many complex causes, of which insecurity and nationalism are somewhere in the mix. I imagine that the UK Independence Party has acquired some loyalists in Boston. Overall, Ukip polled 26.05 per cent of the vote in the east Midlands bloc, a whisker behind the Tories. Clearly, not all soccer rioters are anti-European. Not every xenophobe is a beer-bellied pugilist sun-baked to the colour of blancmange. Quite the reverse. Robert Kilroy-Silk, a shrewd operator much feared by many in the major parties, is an impeccably groomed example of the thinking man's bigot. And yet, in a week when everything centres on Europe, it is impossible quite to disentangle the bottle throwing and the political classes. Yobs berating 'fucking foreigners' in Portugal may not quite be Ukip in designer nylon, but they are certainly the provisional wing of the BNP. They are also closer to the national soul than law-abiding England would dare allow. At some never-acknowledged level, the country identifies with its hooligans. The media, eager to whip up hysteria, would feel strangely cheated if yobs all started drinking carrot juice and listening to Carole King CDs, while upright citizens are happy to condone summary justice, aggressive policing and whatever tactics are required to quell those who shame the nation. That stridency disguises the fact that Europhobia binds some hooligans to their critics. The impulse that turns a boozed-up crowd into an army also converts a jumble of racists and malcontents into a 17 per cent vote for Ukip. The genesis of a political party is, in at least one respect, identical to the birth of a riot. Both are about creating critical mass. That is not a defence of soccer hooligans. Euro 2004 has thrown up images awful even beyond the English norm. Especially horrifying are the stories of drunken fathers screaming at policemen, as their small and exhausted children look on. In term time, and way past midnight, tomorrow's rioters are being groomed. Such images may affront the middle classes. They do not entitle them to pin what is happening on alien low-lifers unlinked to decent society. Sport may be a classless activity now, but so is a particular kind of prejudice. Ukip is on a roll. A Janus-faced Prime Minister tries to sound placatory in Europe and tough at home. Violence off the pitch and rows in the debating rooms may be smoothed over. We might beat Croatia tomorrow and fans, from Portugal to Lincolnshire, might celebrate in peace. Tony Blair has endorsed the constitution, and this good. But the conditions that allow protest to fester are barely being addressed. Discontent, uncertainty, boredom and disillusion risk becoming an indelible feature of the English culture. In Euro-soccer, as in Euro-politics, unrest lives on, to fight another day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gordon EF Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 This has to be a joke. Fair enough, the majority of England fans may have behaved very well, but I bet all the rest did too. England did have more fans there, so what? How you can give an award to a group of fans who rioted almost every night (minority or not), is beyond me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raving On Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 I think he's just on the wind up. I haven't looked at any Sports News sites but I can't believe this. Even if UEFA did turn a blind eye during the Championships more or less, I bet the residents of Albefeira would have something to say about it all. They weren't football fans but just happened to be in the same place as the England football fans? To the extent that they are not football fans is true, they are holligans, but they are there BECAUSE of the football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluetooner Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 And i would doubt they would get and deserve it after all the Hassle Urs Meier or whatever hes called is getting. I dont care what happened but to have your personal life interfered with is over the top. That more than the fans will stop any award. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Saint Geezer Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 Well done if they get it well deserved IMO. I will never forget when they out numbered Portugal in their own country Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Guinness_Alan Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 And i would doubt they would get and deserve it after all the Hassle Urs Meier or whatever hes called is getting. I dont care what happened but to have your personal life interfered with is over the top. That more than the fans will stop any award. The FA should tell the papers and tv companies that published his personal details,including his e-mail address, that they are no longer going to get access to the FA or the England players. If the FA do not take this type of action rather than just mouthing the usual platitudes they will be seen to be condoning the behaviour of these so-called journalists and should be penalised by UEFA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pit Bits Bits Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 We were in Bulgaria at the time they got beat from Portugal and the only newspaper we could get was the English version of the Sun. The abuse the referee took in that paper was well over the top and quite sickening with the over-used phrase being 'Swiss Banker'. They even had a double page spread about how he cheated on his wife and the headline was apparantly a quote from his wife saying......wait for it.......'HE CHEATED ON ME LIKE HE CHEATED ON ENGLAND' Like to have seen their reaction if the incident happened up the other end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzz Killington Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 the lack of link to prove it says fake to me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluetooner Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 Its definitely fake due to the fact its not on the BBC, as soon as anything like this was true the BBC would have it on the front page of their website. As for the thing with the referee. If it was me *and im not saying this because of its England* but Id ban them from taking part in the next international tournament *i.e. the World Cup they all think they gonna win*. Every referee that referees a game now will be so worried that hell make a decision against England that causes this that hell go the opposite way. I am waiting to see if any decision is made, i see Van Nistlerooy got a 2 game ban for saying the referee was poor, i wonder what will happen to English players and officials and newspapers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spr Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 I don't see why they should get an award for behaving like any other civilised human beings would. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deco Posted July 2, 2004 Share Posted July 2, 2004 I don't see why they should get an award for behaving like any other civilised human beings would. Correct, big wow they took more support than any other country and behaved well... most of the other teams fans behaved well too, do they get something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ric Posted July 3, 2004 Share Posted July 3, 2004 I think the proverb "One swallow, a summer does not make". I think they should be congratulated on confining the violence to their own country, but an award? Don't talk pish man! Are you suggesting all English are mindless small children, as they are the only people I would reward for learning how to behave correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ric Posted July 3, 2004 Share Posted July 3, 2004 Are you suggesting all English are mindless small children... Oops, I've just realised what I wrote.... ...it should of been "mindless small violent racist arrogant children". Sorry about that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BerwickMad Posted July 3, 2004 Author Share Posted July 3, 2004 Im not on the wind up by the way. It was on Sky Sports News when David Davis was being interviewed about how the tournament went for England. He also stated in the interview that Sven was the right man to take us to the next world cup and that people should get off Beckhams back. Im not lying. He said there is a posibility our brilliant fans could get an award. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ric Posted July 3, 2004 Share Posted July 3, 2004 Ok, joking aside, the FA could award the English fans for their behaviour (although as pointed out already, why award people for behaing like every other set of fans) but UEFA certainly shouldn't be passing them out. The English fans did a hell of a lot of good for their image. British fans in general are always good at being vocal in their support and I thought it was great to see them put on a good show. Sven may be the man to lead you to the new WC, but I would say he is an average international manager. Look at the difference between someone like Scolari who is willing to make sensible tactical changes to affect the way the team plays an Sven who decides on a style and formation and plays it throughout the game only changing players when they are tired or injured. I would rather not discuss our current manager in relation to either Sven or Scolari though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StewartyMac Posted July 3, 2004 Share Posted July 3, 2004 So lets get this straight. English fans have the most notorious reputation in Europe, with a minority of their fans causing havoc at EVERY major tournament they've been involved in, over the last 20 years or so. So, trundle along to Euro 2004, and their fans, by and large have behaved just as well as the other countries, but now they might be up for an award. I'll tell you this, if that happens, UEFA will become more of a joke than they already are. Aye well done England, your fans behaved this time. What you should get is a directive saying thats how to behave ALL the time, not a fcuking award. Jeez. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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