Uefa threatens to throw England, Russia out of Euro 2016 over fan violence

European football body Uefa on Sunday threatened to throw England and Russia out of Euro 2016 if their fans are involved in more violence after over 30 people were injured in Marseille on Saturday. While French politicians claimed enough police had been deployed, a British expert criticised their tactics in handling the hooligans.

England and Russia fans brawl in Marseille on Satryday Reuters/Jean-Paul Pelissier

The British government on Sunday said it was "deeply concerned" by the violence, "including reports that in some cases England fans were attacked by rival supporters" during fighting in the Vélodrome stadium and on Marseille's Old Port on Saturday.

Having earlier expressed "utter disgust" at the violence and charged Russia with crowd disturbances, racist behaviour and letting off fireworks, Uefa's executive committee added that "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".

Russia's Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said his country's fans "behaved improperly" and conceded Uefa was likely to impose a fine but blamed match organisers for failing to separate supporters.

An inquiry into will announce its findings and any sanctions deemed necessary on Tuesday.

French crowd management criticised

Jean-Christophe Cambadélis of France's ruling Socialist Party on Sunday blamed "drunken cretins" for the violence and insisted that sufficient police were on duty on Saturday.

The problem was not the number of police but their tactics, according to British law professor Geoff Pearson, who advises UK police on crowd control and is currently in Marseille as part of research into policing football crowds.

“The French have approached this as being an issue of crowd control rather than crowd management, that is the first mistake," he told RFI. "There are enough resources here but the issue is that the strategy is wrong for managing the crowds and that when the Russian ultra groups turned up yesterday the police were also operationally incapable of dealing with them.”

France is lagging behind progress in techniques in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal and the UK, he said.

“There is no engagement at all between police and fans," Pearson points out. "So fans will arrive in a city in France and there will have no communication with the police. Police will not say hello, will not come into a crowd so that they can make their own dynamic risk assessment of the level of risks. That means that if an incident occurs in a crowd the French police and certainly the CRS [riot police] have had one response and that is to target the entire crowd with overwhelming force be that tear gas or a baton charge or water cannon. Unfortunately that type of crowd management policing leads to an escalation in disorder. "

Alcohol ban

Some politicians have advocated a ban on alcohol sales in areas where fans congregate.

"Northern European football culture is very much based around alcohol, those fans will find drink," Pearson comments. "One of the problems is that fans drinking from bottles meant they could become potential missiles, whereas fans drinking from plastic glasses, which they were doing for the first one and a half days in Marseille , well you can’t harm anyone. So I think there’s a sensible discussion to be had about restricting the sale of bottles. But I think attempting a prohibition wouldn’t work and secondly those sort of prohibitions can exacerbate disorder because it leads to bigger crowds gathered around places which will sell alcohol, because there will always be places that breach prohibitions. "

Russia's next game is in Lille, northern France, on Wednesday against Slovakia. England's next Group B game against Wales in nearby Lens on Thursday has been classed as a high-risk game by the French authorities.