Hooligans for export

Three Russian fans received prison terms from one to two years, another 20 were expelled from France. Russia, despite the pale game of the national team, managed to be in the spotlight of the French media

This is not to say that the behavior of Russian fans during and after the match with England on June 11 was a surprise to the French police. On the eve of the opening of Euro 2016, the Minister of Sports of France Patrick Kanner warned on the air of the I-Télé television channel that the match England is “one of the five most risky” at the group stage of the euro. But the minister also assured that the police are ready to prevent "any explosive situation."

According to the organizers, up to 20 thousand English fans and about 12 thousand Russian ones were supposed to come to the match in Marseille. The French authorities asked the British government in advance to ban two thousand avid hooligans from the country. By the way, the lists of “potentially dangerous fans” were sent to France by all euros participants. Against the background of two thousand British, the Russian stoplist seemed to the French police at least modest. Only 40 names of “dangerous hooligans” were sent from Moscow. Even the list from Switzerland was twenty times longer.

As a result, after the mass fight of fans in the old port, the Marseille police of 600 participants in unrest was able to detain only ten people: the British, the French, one Austrian and ... not a single Russian. According to the prosecutor of Marseille, 150 Russian fans participating in the fight were able to hide. The French police were under the fire of criticism, the significant share of which came from the part of Russian officials who wanted to shift responsibility from their fans to organizers who did not provide all the risks.

They are ready for battle

“Indeed, the French police have no experience to cope with such situations,” says NT sociologist Nicolas Urkad, a specialist in fan movements. “In France, football hooliganism as a phenomenon is much less developed than in England or Eastern Europe.” But there is another reason for such a weak reaction of the French policemen. The fundamental difference between Russian hooligans from everyone else, and the same English fans, known for their aggressive behavior, was a high degree of organization.

Several dozen Russian fans were well coordinated, acted purposefully, unlike the British were sober to better fight, the police report said. “What we saw in the old port was an act of very rigid and lightning -fast aggression,” explains Sebastian Louis, a specialist in the history of radical fans, “for such a trick it is impossible to be drunk or under the influence of drugs.”

The French police came to their senses only after a couple of days, on the eve of the new match of the Russian team in Lille, where Russian fans went in an organized manner in an organized manner. The bus was detained by the gendarmerie and employees of the National Division to Combat Hooliganism. There is “fairly obvious” evidence that some Russians from the detained bus participated in the riots in Marseille, explained in the prefecture of the Department of Primorsky Alps, before sending all passengers and even drivers for 48 hours under arrest for investigative actions.

Photo: Valery Hache/AFP, AP/Fotolink, SCWARC HENRI/ABACA/EAST News, Mark Large/Solo Synnd