As many as 49 arrests were made by the London police after the violent crackdown by English fans post the Eurocup football final match that took place between England and Italy, reported Loveena Tandon, India Today.
Tandon said that barricades were broken, and policemen were injured around 1 AM when the situation started getting out of hand.
A lot of banter about England’s past was being told and fans of the other team were being intimidated. Luckily, no one was severely injured due to the racist outrage but Italian fans had to cover their faces to avoid any attention to escape the assault.
While sports journalist Mihir Bose attributed it to the incident as an outburst of the frustration of fans who hate to see England lose and the pandemic, it should not be ignored that many black players of the team have been subjected to racist slurs on social media for missing penalties.
Bose, who has been reporting about sports in England since a long time, said that fans who booed the national anthem of Denmark and Italy are resorting to “tribalism” and have not acclimated to the change that English sports has undergone in the 50-60 years marked by a respect for diversity.
While the 80s and 90s saw more violence and today black players comprise 30-40% of the English football team, managers and coaches still are white-dominated positions.
Given England’s knack for being civilised, the behaviour after the Eurocup final was quite the opposite which tells us that the country that was once known for colonising half the world’s population has it’s fissures that it tends to overlook.
