They started arriving in Zone X at nine o’clock in the morning.
Zone X is the name given to areas around stadiums that are difficult to control: at Wembley that’s the surrounding retail shops, bars, restaurants, flats, hotels, the large open spaces and long, wide pathways where thousands can congregate before a match.
From early morning, fans, mostly without tickets, gathered in their thousands and started drinking and taking drugs. By midday, the situation was already out of control.
What proceeded in the next eight hours before kick-off and throughout the game is extraordinary and harrowing. From urinating everywhere and throwing faeces at stewards, to life-endangering attempts to force en masse into the stadium to watch England’s first appearance in a men’s final since 1966.
By 5pm the surges started, as intoxicated thugs knowing the stadium was not sold out due to Covid restrictions decided they wanted in. They occurred again during the national anthems, shortly before kick-off, again after Luke Shaw scored in the second minute and again after Leonardo Bonucci equalised late on.
The independent review conducted by Baroness Louise Casey found more than 20 occasions when overcrowding almost caused serious injury and came close to causing loss of life. It’s not even an exhaustive list: merely the cases the report was able to identify using CCTV during their investigation. It’s nothing short of miraculous that somebody did not die that day.
There was the young boy in a white t-shirt caught under a crush of bodies, three or four deep, around 5.30pm, just able to crawl out from under them before he suffered a seizure and passed out. Around 40 minutes later, that crowd of around 100 at the Spanish Steps, at the northwest of the stadium, had turned into 700.
“Had a surge of a similar nature taken place at this time, those further back wouldn’t have seen the people on the floor and would’ve continued to push forward and the consequences of that surge would’ve been far more serious,” Eric Stuart, the crowd safety advisor who analysed the surge incidents, said.
There was the woman knocked unconscious on the Olympic Steps who had to be rescued by brave police officers breaking their defensive line to haul her out while under attack.
There was the man — believed to be a legitimate ticket holder — swept back into a crowd who had broken into a closed entranceway while holding his child. He was rescued by a steward, and then went back to save another child caught in the carnage.
Ticketless yobs literally ripped open the stadium — tearing apart emergency fire doors. They hurtled toward disabled access doors the moment they were opened to allow people in wheelchairs inside.
“I don’t think anybody anticipated that volume or ferocity or people trying to tear open a stadium with their bare hands,” Jon Clements, director at consultancy firm Crest Advisory who formed part of the review team, said.
At least in great tragedy, heroes emerge — showing the very best of humanity in contrast to its worst.
Around 2,000 ticketless fans made it inside and it is thought had England not lost the penalty shootout another 6,000 were waiting outside to storm in when the doors opened to let people out.
Baroness Casey is certain drugs sustained the hooligans for so long, that it is a greater problem in football than people realise. There was, the review states, a lack of planning, a failure to recognise this was not merely a football match, but a national event.
“There’s something here about our national game that seems to be a vehicle for thuggery, hooliganism and racism,” Baroness Casey said. “And I would like to see ‘Euro Sunday’ as a turning point, that means that were we ever to win the World Cup bid, we would absolutely never see sights like that again.
“Why is it acceptable for footballers in the workplace to go out onto the pitch and receive racist chants? By their own countrymen. What is going on in this country? In our final, a glorious day in our history, and we actually came second, and what do we have?
“Mass thuggery. Drinking from nine in the morning, urinating all over the place, throwing faeces at stewards. I mean, come on guys, we have to look back here and say we have a problem. We need to sort it out. Sorry but I’ve seen too much CCTV footage to actually just take this one calmly. I am calm about it because it’s a near miss but we have to understand why this happened and we have to get a grip of that.”
There are big events on the horizon: Wembley host the 2024 Champions League final and will be the focal point of a bid for the UK and Ireland to host the 2030 World Cup. FA chief executive Mark Bullingham insisted the stadium can adequately handle future high-profile events, that what occurred during Euro Sunday will not make others award tournaments and finals elsewhere. Baroness Casey insisted the FA and the responsible agencies will learn from these mistakes and that Wembley will be safer than ever.
It will take more than words to convince people that taking children and vulnerable loved ones to a high profile game of football at the national stadium is entirely safe again.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3IiQGl9
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