But Uefa’s executive committee has turned events onto both teams, warning both football associations that “irrespective of any decisions taken by the independent disciplinary bodies relating to incidents inside the stadium – it will not hesitate to impose additional sanctions on the Football Association (FA) and the Russian Football Union (RFU), including the potential disqualification of their respective teams from the tournament, should such violence occur again”.
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“Uefa expresses its utter disgust at the violent clashes that occurred in the city center of Marseille, and its serious concern for the incidents at the end of the match inside Stade Velodrome”, it said in a statement.
“Such unacceptable behaviour by so-called supporters of the national teams of England and Russian Federation has no place in football, a sport we must protect and defend”.
Russia, which hosts the World Cup in two years, is already facing UEFA sanctions after its fans were deemed to have orchestrated disorder inside the stadium.
“As soon as they spot their goal, they started to invade the England fans in the corner, ofcourse the English supporters ran and they had no where to go”, an England fan said.
The London-based intelligence gathering centre setup by the UK Football Policing Unit will use images from media and social media to attempt to help identify any perpetrators of the violence carried out on English fans.
Russian Federation was fined and given a suspended six-point deduction for its Euro 2016 qualifying campaign after fans assaulted stadium security staff and displayed illicit banners at the 2012 tournament in Poland and Ukraine.
Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko also criticized the behavior of his country’s fans.
“If they were doing them properly how would the Russian fans have got the fireworks and the flares in?”
Fan violence also spread to a second French city, Nice, where Northern Irish and local fans hurled glass bottles and chairs at each other late on Saturday.
“If there is a failure, it is that of soccer which is sick because some of its fans drink excessively and fight”, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henri Brandet said on BFM-TV. The violence, which raised questions about security, couldn’t have come at a worse moment for France.
Photo: A tear gas canister explodes under a football fan as England fans clash with police in Marseille on June 10, 2016 in Marseille, France.
“There were segregation issues at Stade Velodrome and (UEFA) will implement corrective measures to strengthen the deployment of security personnel at stadiums”. Thirty-five people were hurt in the fighting, including one English fan who suffered a heart attack.
France is hosting the 24-nation tournament while still in a state of emergency following terror attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in November. A total of 15 people were arrested in the city over three days.
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He added: “I would say it was very poor security given all I have been reading in the press about how it was going to be at its highest because of the risks that there were from other threats”.
