Football Hooligans Warned To Hand In Passports

Police from across the United Kingdom will be travelling to France to work with French officers and the UK’s football policing unit have unveiled radical plans to ensure the Euro 2016 matches remain orderly.

Concerns have been raised by French authorities that security is not tight enough at the Stade de France after fans were able to get pyrotechnics and glass bottles into the ground.

In total around 250,000 United Kingdom supporters have tickets, but it is expected that double that number of fans will be in France throughout the tournament, which runs from June 10 to July 10.

France faced two major terrorist attacks past year and intelligence agencies believe there is a real risk that IS-inspired attacks could target stadiums and other crowded places, such as the special fan parks the French authorities are setting up to cater for the many thousands of ticketless fans expected to travel to the tournament.

This has seen almost 2,000 football fans who have been struck with football banning orders in the past to surrender their passports ahead of the tournament.

French police have announced that a 24-hour alcohol ban will be in effect for every game taking place in Lens, one of the host cities, during Euro 2016.

England and Wales will play Russian Federation and Slovakia respectively in their opening Group B matches on Saturday 11 June before meeting five days later in Lens.

British police are hoping to act as “cultural interpreters” to prevent heavy-handed tactics against drunk and rowdy fans who may not cause serious trouble.

Police will also be monitoring social media evidence of supporters caught misbehaving on smartphones as part of new measures that could lead to a surge in numbers of banning orders when they return to Britain.

Whether Ireland will end up playing in Lens remains to be seen, but if we do, fans can’t say they weren’t warned.

“We’ve got to be aware that even if you have a banning order operation that doesn’t entirely guarantee that you won’t have problems. It was described to us yesterday as an extraordinary scale of operation”, he said.