Euro 2016 Group B, Stade Velodrome, June 11 2016
My first visit to a major tournament (not counting the Olympic football here, hipsters), and one that at first glance of the fixture looking back, you may say an "eventful" one.
Let's get the formalities out of the way first. On a Saturday night in the South of France, England were the better side but struggled to break the Russians down. Eventually, Eric Dier smashed home a free-kick to put England ahead. But just when we thought we could reach out and touch the win, some haphazard defending made sure Alexei Berezutski managed to get a late equaliser.OK. On the pitch stuff over. Time for the stuff you probably want to know more about. You had to live under a rock to not know about the violence preceeding and following the game, and also the scenes in the ground at full time.
In my case, the truth is I actually saw little of it at first hand. Like many I arrived in Marseille early on Thursday morning. The Old Port seemed like a good place to go down to at some point, but my hotel was elsewhere, not for from the Velodrome in fact. After finding an Irish bar nearby to drink in (and finding a Bolton Wanderers scarf, being the massive club we are) while waiting for my hotel room to be ready, I went off and fell asleep, being up since 4am.
I woke up and saw reports of what had gone on, and after hearing more stuff on Friday, I made the decision that I just couldn't be bothered going up to the Port, even if any violence was in short sharp bursts. I've never tasted tear gas, but it doesn't sound like a good experience. So **** that.
In any case, when the nearby Avenue du Prado had a number of brasseries with beer on tap and the other games on, why the need to go down there? I understand those who had hotels there and probably didn't know where else to go, but those who kept going back, well it just seemed like a very unwise decision.
Most of the England fans, the vast majority in fact, were great. The atmopshere where we was fantastic, a few locals with drums came down and helped turn it into a carnival atmpshere. But all the time you could hear police siren after police siren, making the quick journey to the Port, where as we know it was a different story. At the same time, some of our fans don't help themselves. The IRA stuff is just out of date and irrelevant now for starters. Not that should legitimise Russian thuggery.After the game, the charge of the Russian fans happened down the other end. As we weren't heading in that direction, we just got out of there knowing if we didn't hang around, it would be fine. But it was a tense few minutes and the sight of armed riot police was anything but reassuring.
The matchday experience obviously didn't feel particularly French. UEFA's continuing McDonaldisation of their competitions ensured we had the same pre-match music and 'entertainment' as every other game at the tournament, any noise the fans making having to drown out Jump Around by House of Pain which we were all asked to dance to. No. Just no. And of course, the vast majority of fans were English.
The entrance procedures to the ground left a lot to be desired. Fans went through one gate, then a security check, then finally got to the turnstile. It was very crammed outside the first set of gates, with no queueing and people still desperate to hold onto their booze. While people remained calm and there were no problems, it could have been easy to cause chaos out on that street.
The rebuilt Velodrome is a stunning stadium though. Up in our top tier, you could see just over the beautiful roof and into the scenery behind.
