SOMETHING unusual happened at the 2024 European Championships. English fans generally behaved themselves.
Only 77 were arrested in Germany, a relatively low number compared to the 800-plus arrests at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, or the 945 England fan arrests in Belgium during Euro 2000.
Their behaviour drew praise from the United Kingdom Football Policing Unit (UKFPU), which is in stark contrast to some previous tournaments. The start of the domestic football season in England on Friday has shifted attention to how supporters will behave while supporting their club sides.
And after the recent far-right unrest, police have been on high alert for potential violence at the matches. Working closely with league officials and the UKFPU, individual forces have assessed each fixture to see whether more officers are needed inside or outside the ground, when fans mill around before the game, or as they go home. Assessments also cover whether more officers might be needed where fans congregate, such as city or town centres.
It was reported that intelligence on known troublemakers linked to football was also re-examined. The reassessment is precautionary, with no intelligence so far that indicates any higher risk of violence at games than normal.
However, more riot-trained officers than normal have been on duty, with police having had intelligence of more far-right protests announced for this weekend.
Football disorder
Still, over recent seasons, official data and senior police officers have already suggested that the level of disorder at domestic matches in England is increasing.
The reasons for this rise are complex, with Professor Geoff Pearson indicating there has been an increase in anti-social behaviour following the Covid-19 pandemic, although these behaviours are often quite low level.
The worst recent event in England was the final of the 2020 European Championships at Wembley, with a Netflix documentary demonstrating how England fans became involved in large scale disorder mostly outside the stadium. An independent review said it was fortunate nobody died.
The 2028 European Championship Finals are being held in the UK, and potentially the final will be at Wembley Stadium again.
Therefore, it is important for those involved with policing football to develop their practice over coming seasons, so Euro 2028 passes safely with a relatively low number of arrests, and crucially without a repeat of the scenes from Euro2020.
Following the disorder at Wembley, the Casey review recommended a new policing category for football matches of national significance.
It is important that a distinction is drawn between the policing of football mega events and the policing of domestic football that occurs in volume throughout the football season.
While it appears a sensible approach from a security perspective is to have a large-scale policing operation for a mega event match, layered within that needs to be more specialised resources that understand crowd dynamics and are experienced in managing the policing of football matches.
For some time, research by Professors Clifford Stott and Geoff Pearson has been calling for more specialism within football policing through the use of liaison officers, whose primary role is to facilitate communication between the police and football supporters in order to minimise disorder.
Despite this, recent research in the context of England suggests that there is a lot of over-resourcing of domestic football matches which utilise public order policing as opposed to dialogue-based policing. This research also emphasises that public order police resources are often inactive during the deployments.
This leads to inefficiency within the policing of football, potentially caused by risk averse practices during the planning process for police resourcing of football matches, a metaphorical risk-averse “park the bus” approach of managing out problems through sheer volume of police resources.
A by-product of this, is that police resources are not then available to deal with other policing priorities, which negatively impacts on the wider community.
Change tactics
The work by Clifford Stott suggests that police liaison resources at football work in the opposite way, by being proactive in early identification of problems and seeking prompt resolutions to these prior to any disorder escalating.
A metaphorical “gegenpressing” – a tactic favoured by German coaches (such as former Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp) where a team goes on the front foot when it loses the ball – has been adopted by British police forces to some extent, but isn’t omnipresent.
What the research evidence is indicating is that more change is needed in how football is policed in England, so that the policing of football at Euro 2028 can set an example on a global stage.
There is no doubt that football does attract spectator behaviour issues, but despite the recent rise in disorder in England, the general consensus is that football hooliganism is not as serious an issue as it was in the 1980s.
The policing therefore should reflect the changed nature of this issue, and adopt a more gegenpressing style, with liaison-based resources proactively negating issues at an early stage.
Clearly there are situations and mega events which will require a higher level of police resources to be present, particularly to avoid a repeat of the Euro 2020 final disorder.
But the risk averse park the bus style of policing should be considered outdated, and public order resources should be more nuanced in supporting and facilitating the work that liaison-based officers are doing.
Further research is required to explore the benefits of more progressive liaison methods being implemented in football policing in England, so that the evidence base and practice can be expanded both nationally and internationally.
The benefits should be seen as not only a reduction in football related disorder and arrests, but increasing availability of police resources in their communities instead of excessive police resourcing at football. — 360info
Dr Richard Hester is a Lecturer in Criminology at Oxford Brookes University.
