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'Very heavy' Britain blasted for letting hooligans travel
Posted: Sunday June 18, 2000 09:56 PM
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- UEFA's executive committee theatened to exclude England from the European championship if its fans continue to cause violence. "UEFA will have to consider the future presence of the English team if there is any more violence," said Gerard Aigner, chief executive of UEFA. Answering a question if Engand could be kicked out, UEFA president Lennart Johansson replied: "That shouldn't be excluded." While the shopkeepers of Brussels and Charleroi mended their shattered windows on Sunday and English fans cooled off in jail, organizers of soccer's European Championship were furious that many hundreds of hooligans were allowed into Belgium to wreak havoc. Soccer's European governing body, UEFA, had called its emergency meeting as a tournament organizer joined with the mayor of Brussels in condemning the British government for not stopping the hooligans from traveling to Saturday's high-risk England game against Germany. Although strong Belgian beer may have contributed to the trouble, the British papers admitted that the figures released by the police -- some 850 fans detained, almost all English, and 56 people injured -- still made shameful reading. Fans smashed up bars and shops and damaged cars during running battles with the police and locals in Brussels on the eve of the game. In Charleroi, police fired water cannons at brawling English and German fans and some of the English celebrated their 1-0 victory over the Germans by smashing shop windows and trashing a McDonald's. British Home Secretary Jack Straw, whose department covers law and order, said on Sunday the problem was wider than "simply football-related hooliganism" and not just drunken teens and unemployed laborers involved. "I have just been told ... that some of those who have been sent back are people including barristers and engineers," Straw said. "They go abroad and they cause this kind of mayhem." The Brits promised to strengthen their laws on dealing with soccer thugs but said they would take a good look at the problem once the tournament was over. "I would like to see tougher measures with regard to traveling restrictions for those with football-related convictions," said Home Office Minister Lord Bassam. "That's something we will have to look at the end of the tournament." That was not likely to satisfy tournament director Alain Courtois or Brussels mayor Francois-Xavier de Donnea. "Everybody did what he had to do. But what has the British government done?" said Courtois, who was especially angry that known hooligans had been able to leave Britain and travel to Belgium. "Too many dangerous hooligans reached Belgium... Screening in Britain was not what we expected it to be," said mayor de Donnea. The papers in Britain had been warning for months that there would be trouble involving English fans who were allowed easy access to the strong Belgian beers. Although some known hooligans were stopped from traveling at airports, train stations and ferries, they were far outnumbered by those detained in Belgium and currently in the process of being deported. The Sunday Telegraph, in an editorial entitled "The National Shame," lashed out at "English fans smashing up windows ... and chanting their racist, abusive slogans." "The spectacle of baying England hooligans, rampaging yesterday through the streets of Brussels and Charleroi, is a source of national shame," the newspaper said. "They have inspired disgust and fear ... sullied the efforts of the England team and spoiled the enjoyment of many genuine football fans." The Mirror, like every Sunday newspaper in Britain, displayed photos of men heaving chairs, blood flowing from a man's bandaged head, police pinning fans to the ground, mounted police charging fans and water cannons blasting a Charleroi plaza. The Sunday Times described how English fans in Charleroi attempted to burn German flags. Some English fans and the local Belgian media also criticized police brutality, with the indiscriminate use of tear gas and clubbing in Brussels and Charleroi. "We saw no violence, we just saw police. They turned the place into a battlefield. They were just waiting for something to happen. It was very heavy," said David Smale, a teacher from Liverpool.
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