"Euros Home"

15 July 2021

40s

Final analysis

This sweet film made by the BBC to mark the end of the Euros reflects a lot of the positivity generated by England's run to the final of the competition. It also, in its closing frame, expresses solidarity with the players who faced the hatred which was also generated during the tournament. But this is an insufficient acknowledgement of what went wrong.

Although it sends tingles up our spine, this is a postscript for a sanitised version of events.

It's actually important that we don't gloss over what happened at Wembley on Sunday, 11 July. The footballers played commendably… they gave their all, and the supporters of any other team in the world would have applauded their honourable effort. But too many of England's supporters have a disgraceful and entitled attitude, and the way in which the three players who missed penalties were racially abused on social media after the match is a savage indictment of this country's values.

Equally dreadful are the stories of the chaos caused by the fans who stormed the stadium. Aided by corrupt stewards, and buoyed by a combination of alcohol and cocaine, an estimated five thousand people without tickets managed to gain access to Wembley that night.

We are incredibly fortunate not to be holding a post-mortem into a Hillsborough-style tragedy. All the ingredients were there… and then some.

In the circumstances, it has to be considered a good thing that FIFA are extremely unlikely to ever ask England to host the World Cup. We don't deserve it.

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