England Fans Should Hang Their Heads In Shame

“The FA strongly condemns the scenes witnessed in Porto overnight,” it said in a statement, as reported by BBC.

“Anyone responsible for these disturbances cannot be seen as true England supporters and are not welcome in football. They are an embarrassment to the team and the thousands of well-behaved fans who follow England in the right way.”

Chief executive Kevin Miles said: “This is exactly the type of incident that Football Banning Orders (FBO) were made for and we’re sure the authorities will be seeking to identify perpetrators.

“While the UK police don’t have powers of arrest in Portugal they can retrospectively apply for FBOs which stop these people getting into UK stadiums or following England away.

“The most galling aspect of these incidents – which most England fans didn’t witness, let alone condone – is that the rest of us will all suffer as a consequence of the reputation perpetuated by this minority of idiots.”

Not again

Football is known for being the beautiful game and we don’t think that’ll ever not be the case, but let’s be hones with ourselves: there’s still a massive, massive issue within the game when it comes to rotten supporters. By rotten, we of course mean those who aren’t really fans at all, and simply go to games in order to cause trouble for others. It’s an exhausting process and frankly, it’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

For those who don’t know, as reported by Sky News, a parade of England fans decided to cause some trouble in Porto last night (and the night before) prior to their UEFA Nations League showdown with The Netherlands. It always seemed as if it was going to be a pretty lively week for the supporters that made the trip over, but boy oh boy did they manage to outdo themselves.

Let’s not forget, by the way, that Gareth Southgate did an entire campaign last week in which he was trying to stop fans from doing this exact sort of thing. He wanted the performances of the players on the pitch to do the talking, and now, all that people are going to talking about is what the supporters have done.

Enough is enough

It’s not all of them, of course, and it’ll continue to be described as a minority by the masses, but that isn’t the point. There needs to be a real crackdown on things like this, because otherwise, the chaos will just continue. This is supposed to be a golden age for England fans after the 2018 FIFA World Cup, to the point where the Three Lions are considered to be one of the favourites to win the European Championships next year.

Hopefully England can take home the Nations League trophy so that the memory of this can be put to one side, but having said that, maybe this shouldn’t be put to one side at all. Maybe we should be broadcasting the faces of these idiots, in order to expose them for what they are: cowards and frauds.