Gareth Southgate admits that England supporters’ off-field troublemaking has a detrimental impact on his players’ performances on the pitch.
The England manager has called for calm when supporters travel to Munich for Tuesday night’s Nations League game against Germany, hoping that the match is not added to the growing list of games ruined by supporter misbehaviour.
England are currently serving a two-game stadium ban after the chaos at Wembley during the Euro 2020 final last summer, when ticketless supporters stormed the stadium and stampeding almost cost lives.
As a result, the Nations League game against Italy on Saturday will be played behind closed doors — with a few thousand under 14s in attendance, permitted by Uefa rules — but there are concerns the match against rivals Germany could attract troublemakers.
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Southgate pointed out that the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations over the Bank Holiday weekend, when hundreds of thousands of people celebrated in public parties across the country, proves that the English can enjoy themselves without mass fights breaking out, clashes with police, vandalism, antisocial behaviour and other law-breaking.
Asked if fan trouble affects the players, Southgate replied: “It definitely has an impact. Staff are working on things detracting from the main part of their job, you are embarrassed when you hear about it, because you know it’s a representation of your country, in the same way there’s been a brilliant representation of that across the world in the last couple of days [with the Jubilee celebrations].
“So we’re always conscious of that, I think we can only give the correct messages, it’s then you’ve got to rely on people behaving themselves.”
Southgate believes the behaviour of England’s fans will be monitored closely by football’s authorities due to the repeated problems at international and club level.
When England travelled to Dortmund for a friendly against Germany in 2017, England supporters sang derogatory chants about World War Two and two fans were issued life-time bans for making Nazi gestures. In total, 27 England Supporter Travel Club members — the core group of England fans who most frequently travel to away fixtures — had membership suspended for set periods. Six others were sent written warnings.
“We know because of the landscape at the moment that the spotlight is going to be on so we all want to be coming away talking about a brilliant night and be talking about good football and a stunning atmosphere,” Southgate said. “We don’t have any control over that, we can only ask that’s what our supporters deliver.”
Fan trouble was a particular issue at the end of the domestic season. There were pitch invasions at several games, including when Manchester City won the Premier League title at the Etihad Stadium against Aston Villa on the final day and when Everton secured Premier League survival at Goodison Park against Crystal Palace.
Aston Villa goalkeeper Robin Olsen was repeatedly slapped as he attempted to leave the field while fans poured onto the pitch. Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira was also involved in an altercation when he appeared to kick out at an Everton supporter goading him, although the police and Football Association took no action following investigations.
During another pitch invasion after a Championship playoff semi-final game, Sheffield United captain Billy Sharp was assaulted by a Nottingham Forest season ticket holder who was later jailed for 24 weeks.
Southgate, however, also knows that a large number of travelling England supporters give a good representation of the nation.
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“We have supporters from all parts of the country who travel brilliantly, and leave foreign countries with a great feeling about England and English supporters,” he said. “We know that there’s always been others that do it a different way, and that’s been the same for 40-odd years, we’ve still got to try to police that as well as we can, and make sure we keep stopping people from doing those things. That’s not easy to control, frankly.”
England midfielder Kalvin Phillips echoed his manager’s sentiments, asking for fans to act respectfully in Germany. He does not have many friends or family travelling to watch the game.
“There is a lot of issues, there’s always going to be issues, but we want our fans to go there and be respectful to Munich and be respectful in a different country,” Phillips said. “We’d expect the same back. When Germany came to our country, you know, it was very respectful.
“The fans support us well and when they behave well and when they act like real fans, which they always do, I think they’re no problem.”
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