French police used tear gas in the city of Marseille, when English fans clashed with a group of locals ahead of the Saturday England-Russia game of the European Championship 2016, Irish Independent reports.
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Friday began with cleaners hosing down sidewalks and sweeping up broken glass left over from Thursday’s incidents, apparently provoked local youths from the city’s gritty suburbs as England fans drank and sang outside an Irish bar.
Chaotic scenes unfolded of hundreds of the specialist officers, dressed head to toe in riot gear, advancing on hundreds of England fans who fled down the street.
They were baiting us, and then attacked. “The gang knew exactly where we were, and clearly wanted to hurt us”, Chris Lord, another England fan from London told the newspaper. One fan wearing a red England shirt was handcuffed and arrested.
Fans from across the pond were said to have gathered in the English-themed Queen Victoria pub and a huge concentration have set up camp in the town.
“It was all fine until, our understanding is, a group of around 30 to 40 locals turned up, I think with the intention of provoking the England fans to see if they could get a rise out of them”.
The fighting erupted just after midnight after scores of drunken fans packed into two bars on the waterfront, singing anti-IRA songs and chants of “ISIS, ISIS, where are you?”, throwing pints of beer and small fireworks as armed officers surrounded them.
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Roberts, who is leading British police’s liaison effort, said: “England supporters had been in Marseille yesterday without issue”.
As dusk fell those few locals had grown into a massive mob as thousands of youths from the city’s less glamorous quarters decided they would not take the invasion lying down and proceeded to hunt for and attack isolated England fans, one of whom was lucky to survive after having his throat cut.
Fist fights broke out between English-, French- and Russian-speaking men, and one man was thrown into the harbour after he was beaten to the ground by local fans.
England fans were involved in serious disorder over several days in Marseille in 1998 before and after a match against Tunisia in the World Cup.
“It is in the hands of the authorities to identify those involved and deal with them appropriately”.
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The Football Association (FA) expressed its disappointment at the disorder and called for fans to act “in a respectful manner”.
