The Stade Velodrome Violence.

Yesterday I wrote about the two days of rioting that occurred in Marseille, France ahead of England's Euro 2016 match against Russia.

You will notice that at no point did I refer to; "English Football Fans." That is because they had little to no role in the violence.

Instead the rioting was caused by a group of around 300 English hooligans and was centred around two bars - O'Malley's and the Queen Victoria - located on the Old Port seafront of the city. These hooligans did not have tickets for last night's match and had not travelled to France to watch football at all. Instead they had travelled to drink and fight in a sad effort to prove that they are the toughest men in all of Europe.

With England being able to prevent these hooligans from travelling to France and France being easily able to refuse them entry this situation should not have been allowed to arise. It certainly should not have been allowed to arise prior to a match between England and Russia.

Football hooligans in particular are very focused on nationalism which they seen almost as an extension of their own identity. Due to Britain's support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the sanctions it has imposed on Russia as part of that support there is a high level of animosity between England and Russia at the moment. Particularly due to England's childish campaign to have Russia stripped of the 2018 World Cup.

I actually have a strong suspicion that the draw for Euro 2016 was rigged specifically to put Russia and England in the same group in order to provide a talking about the tensions between the two nations. The match-up has certainly exposed the rabidly anti-Russian bias amongst large sections of the British media and the readers they lead.

The English hooligans spent Thursday (9/6/16) and Friday (10/6/16) rioting through Marseille claiming that they were the best in World, they controlled the city and the French police were scared of them. Following two days of provocation when the Russian hooligans arrived on Saturday (11/6/16) they did so very much in the mood to put the English hooligans in their place. As a result the violence massively increased on Saturday before the match spreading through much of the city.

As the Russian hooligans were also football supporters who had travelled to Marseilles because they had tickets to the match this led to a much more serious situation in the Stade Velodrome stadium itself.

At the end of the match the Russian hooligans broke through a sterile area in the stands intended to keep the rival supporters apart. In response the English football fans simply ran away from the charging Russian hooligans. This led to them being pressed up against a fence at the opposite end of the stand.

This type of crush is chillingly reminiscent of basically the 1985 UEFA Champions League Final held at the Heysel Stadium in Belgium.

Here Juventus hooligans launched a similar charge against Liverpool hooligans. Rather than retreating the Liverpool hooligans launched a counter charge. This caused the Juventus hooligans to run away at such speed they became crushed against a wall at the opposite end of the stand. That wall then collapsed causing Juventus fans and hooligans to plummet several metres/yards to the ground. Between the crush and the wall collapse 39 people were killed and 600 injured.

I am not making excuses for those who participated in last night's violence. After all they are each individually responsible for their actions and they should be held accountable for those actions.

However when you are preparing a crowd safety/security plan for an event of this type your first assumption is often that people are fundamentally stupid - particularly when they're in large crowds. Therefore the purpose of the plan is really to protect people from their own stupidity.

As such the event organiser - UEFA - really should have had a plan in place to prevent exactly this situation from arising. Particularly as with two days of violence in the run-up to the match it was extremely likely that this type of situation was going to occur. Although I am an England the football steward in me was extremely relieved when Russia levelled the match late on.

What makes UEFA's failure even worse it that this type of situation is far from unusual at football matches and the methods to prevent it are well rehearsed. You simply place lines of riot police along the gangways either side of the sterile area to form lines of segregation between the rival groups. The hooligans can kick and punch against these police riot shields as much as they like. The only reward they're going to get is a baton strike to the head.

The problem is that this isn't the type of violent imagery that corporate sponsors want to see their brands associated with. As such it seems likely that UEFA decided to put the wishes of the tournament sponsors ahead of the safety of fans by insisting that stewards rather than the required police officers were deployed to try and keep the rival groups apart.

In response to last night's events UEFA has announced that it is going to investigate both the Russia and English Football Associations (FA's) for offences relating to a failure to control their fans. With the Russian FA already serving a suspended sentence for a similar offence today UEFA have announced that they are to be charged. At the very least the suspended sentence will be invoked and Russia will be fined for the original offence.

Blaming the national FA's for last night's events does strike me as distinctly unfair. Unlike at home games neither England nor Russia actually have the ability to control their fans inside neutral stadiums. That responsibility lies entirely on the tournament organiser - UEFA.

I am particularly interested to know what is going to happen to the UEFA official who signed off on the safety plan for last night's match. After all we had exactly the same problem with fan segregation at the recent French Cup Final played at the Stade de France. There Marseille hooligans were the aggressors.

Even before last night this complete lack of organisation by UEFA was threatening to undermine the entire tournament.

The official mascot for Euro 2016 which is primarily aimed at children is called "Super Victor." It seems no-one at UEFA bothered to do the simple Internet search that would have revealed that "Super Victor" is already the brandname of a distinctly non-child friendly dildo.

Last night UEFA's official tournament Twitter feed Tweeted out a rumour that the Marseille underground rail (Metro) system had been shut down after an England fan had been pushed under a train and killed. Later on it sent out a Tweet claiming that it had been a Frenchwoman who had been killed. It's source for this rumour was the UK Ambassador to France.

The tournament organisers should have a much better grip on what is going on then that. Particularly when it comes to highly inflammatory rumours of fans being killed.

12:45 on 12/6/16 (UK date).