This is very true, but unfortunately Sunday showed the world that we really haven't moved that far on from the drunk englishman abroad hooligan element that spoiled many summer tournament in 80s & 90s. We have the best stadia in the world but some of the most moronic fans too.
I agree and it’s sad and disgusting to see. But if Russia and Qatar can host world cups then fifa obviously aren’t very picky so can’t tell England where to go
The point with Russia and Qatar is they're part of this "Expanding the FIFA family" bollocks that Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter were fans of, which also explains the USA in 1994, Japan & South Korea in 2002 and FIFA outright stating the 2010 tournament would go to an African country which is why only South Africa and Morocco submitted bids And ultimately that's where several bids were wasting their time when you look at the various bidders Spain & Portugal - Spain hosted the 1982 tournament, while Portugal hosted Euro 2004 (and that led to a ****load of white elephants) Holland & Belgium - co-hosted Euro 2000 England - hosted the 1996 tournament plus Euro '96 Russia - never hosted a tournament Same can be said for the 2022 bids USA - hosted in 1994 Japan - co-hosted in 2002 South Korea - co-hosted in 2002 Australia - never hosted a tournament Qatar - never hosted a tournament On the other hand, both Euro 2020 and the 2006 World Cup go for this idea of spreading out tournaments, which personally I think is bloody stupid when you have things like the Denmark/Wales game where one team got to Amsterdam from their camp in Copenhagen while the other from their camp in Baku, but that seems to be one of Platini's ideas, hence the 2026 World Cup is split between the US, Canada and Mexico where surely similar issues can happen given not just the size of the US (case in point, Seattle, Miami, Houston, Boston and San Francisco are all venues) but then factor in Toronto, Edmonton, Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City also being venues and suddenly the commute from Baku might look a lot less of a pain
Russian hooliganism is also much more organised - think more along the lines of scheduled brawls between rival fans. Not saying the other stuff doesn’t happen there too but the culture is very different to what’s developed in England since the 80s, even if old-school English firms serve as the Russian inspiration.
Polish fans are the same, as they arrange their mass punchups for the outskirts of the town either earlier in the day or sometimes the day before - which made the last World Cup easier to police as the authorities knew what to look for, and they were monitoring the hell out of Polish fans for this reason (and hopefully only this reason...) The fact so few people wanted to chance what would happen if they got bladdered and hurled furniture around probably helped a lot, too
And because Russia never got anywhere near that game, having been knocked out in the quarter-finals by Croatia. That happened in the relatively small and isolated Sochi, too. The rough UK equivalent would be Dundee or Canterbury and I can't see it kicking off in them, either.
I'm just going to digress and say that's not the biggest issue with the 2026 tournament; 16 groups of 3 with the top 2 going through is open to all manner of skull-duggery. Why didn't they go with 8 groups of 6? Surely we'd all prefer to see our team play a minimum of 5 games
That sounds tailor-made for some suspiciously easy draws to be made, especially when you see how they've weighted the number of teams per confederation Europe 16 Africa 9 Asia 8 South America 6 North & Central America 6 Oceania 1 Playoffs 2 In other words, they've already drawn Brazil against Canada and New Zealand, so we just have to wait for those teams to go through the formality of qualifying
I thought that Blackpool was insulting and Brighton was a little too large, in terms of UK to Russian scale. Sochi's growth and use doesn't really have a modern equivalent over here, unfortunately. Yarmouth?
Well I'll start with his the waves are impossible to surf on as calling them ankle slappers is paying them a compliment, and then bring up how this also means you can see every single turd bobbing along in the surface, and finish up with mentioning how my hotel thought that Fawlty Towers was a documentary
Germany's U23 Olympic team has walked off with 5 minutes of their friendly against Honduras. Hertha Berlin's Jordan Torunarigha was racially abused and his teammates left the field in response. Their coach, Stefan Kuntz, said afterwards: "When one of our players is racially abused, playing on is not an option." Honduras have claimed via Twitter that the issue was a misunderstanding:
Please tell me they're not using the Suarez defence of "No, this racial slur means something different in Honduran Spanish!"
Brexit and the Tories haven’t helped. That undercurrent of nasty nationalism that spills over into racism, xenophobia, drunkenness and violence has always been there among a sizeable minority, but recent events have given them licence to come to the fore and beat their chest. Their behaviour is tolerated. We saw little police presence at the Euros, but if there’s a protest against some aspect of the establishment, the police are out in vast numbers. Even the Utd fans’ protest against the Glazers saw huge numbers of GMP on the street, yet pro-England hooliganism gets little or no response.
Anyone wishing to have an early look at Brian Hill might want to check out the Olympics tomorrow. Spain play Egypt at 8.30am and I think it's on Eurosport.