Football’s Coming Home…. to a scene of utter chaos!

‘Everyone seems to know the score, they’ve seen it all before’ The opening line to the anthem that has been blaring up and down the country the past month during England’s successful campaign at Euro 2020. Contrary to the songs lyrics however, in the 14 years I’ve been attending events at Wembley Stadium I have never before seen scenes like I did this past weekend.

It’s taken me a few days of reflection to properly articulate the pre-match events of Sunday, but the more people I tell about this from first hand experience, I am met with shock and outrage so here is how I saw the madness unfold.

I was fortunate enough to have a ticket for the showpiece final between England and Italy this past weekend. As always, my ticket was a disabled access one and I had a companion with me to keep me out of trouble!

A potent stench of marijuana filled the air of Wembley Way as we made our way towards the stadium. I’ve never really been involved in ‘drug culture’ but the first thing that shocked us on our route was the openness in which cocaine was being both sold and consumed so openly and casually in the street. We were approached on multiple occasions both before and after the game by people openly offering to sell us cocaine.

Whilst the number of people around Wembley was far greater than it had been both previously during this tournament but also pre covid when I had attended other events, I naively thought those without tickets who had come up for the ‘atmosphere’ would leave the area to find somewhere else in London to watch the game.

There were several large groups of people around the stadium perimeter who we overheard boasting about having ‘fake tickets’ or a number of them planning to use the same screenshot of a mobile ticket for the game to get into the stadium. Having attended another game during Euro 2020 at Wembley, I wasn’t sure how they planned on getting that to work, the tickets are activated by the stewards on a checkpoint using a special device that uses the phones Bluetooth to communicate with the app the ticket is stored in.

We made our way to a disabled accessibility entrance, which is to the right of the main steps you come to at the bottom of Wembley Way. Ordinarily, this route is fairly quiet — it does double up as an entry route for those in ‘Club Wembley’ and Hospitality seating but from experience, there are minimal people in this area. On this occasion however, we sensed a large number of people behind us. There were additional barriers at the end of the path and a steward checked our tickets and let us through. From there we then joined a separate line designated for disabled supporters for our covid check to be done and our tickets to be activated.

Suddenly whilst waiting, we heard a huge commotion and turned to see the disabled ticket checkpoint we had passed through not 45 seconds ago was suddenly being rushed by around 70–100 thugs who were trampling over security staff and each other heading straight towards us to break through to reach the turnstile area. I was incredibly frightened at this stage and have no footage or photos as my own safety was my number 1 priority at this point. However the first 20 seconds of the video on this BBC News article shows the exact moment I’m describing. Had we been any later than we were passing through, I have no doubt I would have been crushed.

The police and Wembley security moved quickly to eject many of those who had broken through and also seal off the area that had been breached. Police dog and horse units all moved in. I’ve read a number of posts online criticising the security teams and police, but when there are only 7 stewards on an entrance met with 100 large grown drunken men, quite frankly, what the fuck are you expecting them to do!? From what I saw, they acted quickly to prevent the area we were in being further breached than it had been. Once again, naivety made me think that would be the last of the trouble!

We made our way onto what I refer to as the ‘upper concourse’ the area you find the statue of Bobby Moore situated and where you walk around to find your entry gate, which in our case, was Gate B.

The Bobby Moore Statue — taken after the game when things were much quieter

On our walk to Gate B we passed a number of groups who we could overhear saying things like ‘there’s no way in’ or ‘lets try round the other side’. Immediately I realised a number of the ticketless thugs had made it closer than I expected. We then witnessed several ticketless fans who had managed to jump over or barge through turnstiles being ejected by security staff as we walked past several entrances. There were large amounts of commotion and security staff were stretched dealing with the masses of people trying to get in without tickets whilst also trying to help legitimate fans with any problems they had.

We reached Gate B and headed to the far side as this is where the accessibility entrance door is, that allows me to enter the stadium without needing to try and squeeze through the barriers, which with my mobility aid, is sometimes a little tricky. Unfortunately, the ticketless yobs had spotted said door as a window of opportunity as they were waiting for it to be opened to then try and rush it in an attempt to overpower staff and gain entry. You may well have seen videos circulating on social media such as , which shows the tactic in operation.

Once we were finally inside, which took a while due to staff having to try and get me and my friend inside the door and closing it before anyone took a chance — and as you might have guessed ‘moving quickly’ is not a skill I have, all was fine, I was pretty pissed off for a few minutes but was then able to find my seat and enjoy the game — despite the final result not going in England’s favour — congratulations Italy.

I did speak to one guy in the queue for the toilets who told me as he entered the turnstiles, a man put his arms around him from behind and said in his ear ‘shut the fuck up or I’ll stab you’ before barging through the turnstile with him. Just disgraceful.

Reflecting on the day’s events, two things stand out for me.

1) The thing that pisses me off most, is that these thugs chose to target accessibility entrances as a means of getting in without a ticket. Facilities that are designed to help people like myself and those with other accessibility needs to attend and enjoy these events as safely and easily as possible.

2) Behaviour like this does ‘England Fans’ no favours. I refuse to even acknowledge those I have referred to in this piece as ‘thugs’ and ‘yobs’ as fans, because they aren’t. They are small-minded individuals with very little care in the football on display. I think their main intention of getting in, is nothing more than for bragging rights, so they can tell all their mates on Monday morning ‘yeah I got into that final for nothing’. They have total disregard for the safety of anyone else and are fully focused on their own selfish end goal. However, this is a problem with ‘football culture’ in this country that somehow needs addressing.

Twitter: @itstheJW

Originally published at https://www.itsthejw.com on July 14, 2021.