Was it worth it mate?
I am sure you all don’t need to be told what happened at Upton Park last night, I mean the papers are full of it, the TV is on it and quite frankly if you are English like me, you are embarrassed and disgusted this morning.
I am extremely ashamed that this incident has taken football back years. One game and a bunch of animals have done incredible damage to the games reputation in one evening. It has been years since an incident like this has occurred, and I really thought that the cancer of violence at football had been cured.
The last notable incident was in 2002 and that also involved Millwall, no surprise there right?
So what went wrong, who are the culprits and what can be done to stop these mindless, pathetic excuses for humans before it happens again, seriously damaging England’s chances of being awarded the World Cup in 2018?
Take a last look around! This guy will not be allowed back to Upton Park
First of all, let’s get this straight.
Those fighting outside of the stadium last night, in the surrounding streets are NOT football fans, they are not supporters, they are just using the event as a way to fight in the name of the place they come from.
If you watch the coverage below, there are very few football shirts on show. These disgusting individuals arranged to meet each other for a fight, damaging local businesses and injuring innocents caught up in the trouble on the way to a match.
Thugs don’t wear football colors; that way they are harder to be picked out in a crowd by Police or in the streets or by opposing thugs. Thugs are not in the slightest bit interested in football. There were riots and running battles with Police last night during the game while people with tickets watched their teams.
These people will not be affected by a ban of any kind, to club or country. They will simply take their aggression elsewhere or to another local team. These people need to be locked up. One man was stabbed, in a street a block or so from the ground. The 44-year-old man is in a stable condition. He was knifed 30 mins after the game had started.
The trouble in the ground was always coming. This is where the police were naive. There were clashes outside the ground and skirmishes all over the area all afternoon. This set the tone and should have acted as a warning.
By the time the match came, the police were occupied by the rioting outside and their presence inside was not close to what it should have been. Add the fact that the cops inside were mostly in the Millwall block. The Boleyn ground was a pressure cooker of hatred and built-up aggression… add booze and it’s a time bomb.
The afternoon’s trouble had all these idiots riled up and ready to rock, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that West Ham and Millwall fans tried to get at each other during the game, nor should it come as a surprise that 50 prats would spoil the game by getting on the pitch.
This fixture brought out the idiots en masse more than any other game.
Stewards stop Millwall 'fans' getting on the pitch.
As soon as there was trouble, the game should have been postponed and rescheduled, stopping mindless morons from having their mindless violence associated with the tie.
West Ham and the local police did not recognize the potential for trouble within the ground at all.
Millwall fans will say that they were angels inside the ground, that they didn’t run onto the pitch. Their manager talked up their behavior in the press even, which is ridiculous; they had more police/steward attention and getting on the pitch was impossible (though it didn’t stop them trying as you can see from the pictures and video included on this page).
The bottom line is that thousands of Millwall fans with tickets, and thousands without, headed to West Ham with one thing on their mind: violence. After 2002′s horrendous play off disaster in Deptford, Millwall controlled their fans by making ID cards compulsory. Fans who wanted to go to games had an ID, and given that hooligans don’t want to be identified and without the opportunity to cause trouble, why would they go?
The system worked. Now the cards are not necessary, Millwall once again let every Tom, Dick and Harry in, sacrificing the image and the safety of football supporters for cash via increased gates. The club sold the away allocation last night and are responsible for those tickets and who buys them.
No problem, just two groups of "like minded lads"
Millwall need to be punished and the only way is to impose games behind closed doors or ban away supporters from games for a decent spell of time, at least long enough for the idiots to grow up and for the next generation of wannabe hooligans to have no experience to replicate. ID cards need to return for home games also and immediately.
Millwall have a responsibility. They have the reputation on merit, yet most Millwall fans think that it is unjustified. It is not. A gander at an unofficial Millwall message board today found some posts that tell their own story. This one on the left says the fighting should be allowed and that it’s all ’no big deal’.
As for West Ham, they need to ban every single one of the fans on the pitch and fine the club heavily to set an example that planning and making the right decision before a game is crucial. I am sure the local police will be called to task also. They failed to spot the signs, failed to control the crowd and failed to deploy enough officers inside the Boleyn ground. Along with West Ham they made the wrong decision to play the game.
The cretins in the street fighting may have done serious damage to England’s World Cup bid, yet they won’t care as football means nothing to them apart from the opportunity to use it as an excuse to stab someone in the face.
The FA is investigating last nights violence and I expect the punishment to be strict. Unfortunately, most of the animals involved outside of the stadium will get away with it and be ready for the next time, and because of their selfish actions, a nation of football fans wanting a World Cup on home soil may suffer.
It was said here earlier, but it bears repeating: both clubs should be playing to empty parks. As you point out, Ned, the club have a serious degree of culpability, and they need to feel the pinch of losing a crowd for a match or three. And even then it doesn’t do justice to the damage they’ve done England’s WC bid.
Very well said, Ned.
@Phil: Yeah it was my point yesterday but I totally agree that it bears repeating. I don’t care if the majority of Millwall and West Ham supporters and even the clubs themselves are supposedly innocent. Someone up the chain of command has to bear responsibility for bringing this stupid, stupid behavior to an end.
@ spec: Totally agreed. The clubs need to have a horse in the race. It has to matter to their bottom line that this sort of thing be stamped out for good.
Nice writing Ned. Clubs like Millwall should probably be forced to permanently require ID for all matches, home and away.
A slum game watch by slum people in slum stadiums. This was said about English football in the 1980s; it still applies to Millwall.
The point that ‘these thugs aren’t really football fans’ seems to be accurate, but at the same time it hardly matters. Any random person greatly increases their chances of being hurt by these idiots if they are at a football match – so claiming that these this violence is not done by ‘fans’ seems like a distinction without a difference. Whether these people are fans of Millwall, they just love scarves, or the delicious bread at the bakery near the stadium will never be the story – the fact that the violence happens in and around a match is the story.
Everyone involved needs to treat this like it really *is* a football problem if they genuinely want the violence driven out of the game. The solution is not in denial to protect the image or reputation of the game, that ship has sailed. The game will be judged by the response to incidents like this (as it was/is involving racist chants that seem to be gone from the UK). The ‘it’s just a few bad apples’ response never works.
When I saw the picture of the fat guy running onto the pitch today my first reaction, and I’m in no way kidding, was that it was Mike Ashley.
I get pissed at how people who don’t give a s**t about soccer start reporting on it when this kind of thing happens. F**king London man.
Your post confused the hell out of me. The pictures and video show West Ham ‘fans’ pushing at police and throwing objects, and West Ham fans invading the pitch. Somehow, to you, this equals Millwall needs id cards again. Huh? I don’t support either team, and I’m confused by the automatic Millwall hate.
Listen, if you read more of the papers you’ll see West Ham had just as many incendiary message board posts, both before and after the game. The press has been splashing them everywhere so they aren’t hard to find. I’d also be surprised if every english team message board didn’t have a similar rant on fighting and getting back the ‘old atmosphere’. The team I support did – and I was proud of how quick the poster was told to get stuffed.
Why not want equal measures for both teams? They were both involved, in all ways. West Ham has a bunch of arses supporting them too. Why not id cards for both?
I don’t know about stopping the game, it seems West Ham were kind of damned if they did, damned if they didn’t. Keep the game going, and garbage like the above ensues. Stop the game though, you get a bunch of angry fans upset they didn’t get to see a match, and who knows what happens then.
“top the game though, you get a bunch of angry fans upset they didn’t get to see a match, and who knows what happens then.”
See GNR and Metallica riot.
Dear G, I felt I was balanced. After all Millwall fans are the ones who traveled to West Ham for a ruck. I feel sorry for the real Millwall fans but if you read the above and watched the video, looked at the pictures and read reports elsewhere you will know the only reason Millwall fans were not all over the pitch was because they were held in by force. They tried very hard indeed! As for the ID cards, it wasn’t West Ham and Tottenham, it was West Ham and Millwall, just like in 2002, it wasn’t Birmingham and Preston, it was Birmingham and Millwall. Millwall are always involved when this happens and the ID cards curbed the behavior and kept the goons away. It did work. Now there are no ID cards and anyone can buy a ticket? Look what happens? And no one has forgotten Leeds at the Den last season either. Or was that not Millwall?
West Ham are to blame here too, but so are any other party that end up being the team ‘v Millwall’.
@Ryan. It should never have been played. Trouble all afternoon set the tone.
30f is right. Keep pretending that this isn’t a “football problem” and it will continue. Just like the monkey calls. Easy to dismiss it all if your only goal is to keep football from being implicated.
But it is implicated. In the minds of millions around the world who may want to understand the game but now have yet more reinforcement of the hooligan rep.
I say no WC for England until they clean it up. None. Sort it out. Should we risk, say, 5 dead Argentine supporters after an England loss in Manchester in a WC quarter? Because yesterday proved that it COULD happen.
@Auto: Thanks Ted Kennedy, no one else is paying attention today. As for the WC, you a crazy man, lets let South Africa and Brazil have it with all their problems and not England? Euro 96 went very well mate. The Germans and Poles fought like animals in 2006 and Italy has massive hooligan issues. The police were clearly not on their game last night. We cannot tar the FA and a national WC committee with the same brush as the local plod in east London.
By the way, if you looked at the home office report like I did today you will have discovered the most arrests in English football and the most banning orders were for Cardiff, Leeds and Millwall. England games home and away had a super record.
Penciling England into the Quarters already? Ballsy!
I’m surprised we haven’t had the solitary Millwall fan defending their s**t in this post yet, as per usual when this happens.
I did look at the Home Office reports. Comforting. Be sure to point to those the next time this happens. When there are dead people. “But it’s not football supporters! It’s Millwall idiots!” Good luck with that.
We love football. And yesterday made us sick. What about the rest of the world. Those that want to like football? “Sure people died. But that’s not football!” Yeah, that’ll work.
I think it’s a sad commentary on the times that I can’t really think of a place for the 2018/22 WC. France? France has all sorts of problems. Eastern Europe doesn’t have the infrastructure. Football in Argentina is on life support. Italy has and has had more fan violence than England. The Netherlands is in bad shape; worse than Italy. Germany and Austria just hosted the Euros and the 2006 World Cup. We know what football support in Mexico is like. What’s left? Asia, maybe. England. Spain (and/or Portugal). The United States. Canada. What’s left?
Australia will get it.
@Auto, as I said, it always involves Millwall. Millwall v…They are the common denominator.
I was following the match online, and texting a friend who’s also a West Ham fan. He said it best, as an American West Ham fan: Sad and embarassing. I totally agree with the person who wrote above that West Ham needs to get hit, and hit hard, with fines and a couple matches played to an empty stadium. Millwall bears some of the blame, but in the end, it was West Ham’s ground, and they (along with the local police), did a piss poor job of controlling the crowd and realizing when it was time to shut the match down.
I became a West Ham fan because of some awesome people I met on a trip to England 7 years ago. The people who introduced me to football and to West Ham, and the fans like them, weren’t on the street that day. They were in the stadium. They’re even more horrified by this than I am, because it happened blocks from where they live. The vast majority of West Ham fans may be innocent, but the fact that it happened at all means the club must take responsibility.
West Ham should be punished but I feel strongly that Millwall are involved in all these incidents when they happen and they travelled there to cause trouble. Millwall FC control the tickets and who buys them. They are very responsible in my eyes.