Champions League Quarter Finals Leg 1

PHB

United met up in Piazza Novana on the Tuesday afternoon, about 100-handed. About 6:30pm everyone marched the short walk to where all the bars are in Camp di Fiori, and headed straight for the Drunken Ship, which is where Middlesbrough had been attacked the previous year and United had tried to warn people specifically not to go. By 11 o'clock, a few of what were presumed to be Roma's spotters had popped by but they obviously didn't fancy their chances, but who could blame them? United ended up on a pub crawl and there was no aggro.
Wednesday afternoon and everyone was back in the Campo di Fiori, again though no Roma in sight. By 4 o'clock everyone had headed down to Piazza Flaminio and soon there were 250-300 Reds all enjoying a drink. After a couple of hours the group headed off on the 40minute+ walk to the ground, on the way being passed by a number of police vans who were happy to allow the Reds to continue. It's been rumoured that the GMP officers in Rome insisted to the local police chief that the group should be stopped, but that he was not interested as, seeing as none of the group were wearing colours then they couldn't be hooligans.
As the United group crossed the bridge and walked towards the stadium about a large group of Roma approached with bats from the next bridge down. These were quickly chased off, until a group of police near the ground intercepted the United fans. A game of cat-and-mouse then followed with the Roma fans being chased off, followed by the police dispersing the United fans. This ended with a CS gas attack on United followed by a baton charge. Roma then followed up behind the police, who strangely left the scene. By this stage Roma had added knives, thunderflashes, coshes and even an axe to their weaponry and the running battles with the (now two) United groups continued for about another 10 minutes.
By the time United's last assault ended up with the last contingent of about 70 Reds being chased back to the turnstiles it seemed like most were glad of the break, if only to catch breath. By now it was about 45 minutes until kick-off, and apart from a half-hearted attempt to leave the fenced compound in front of the turnstiles which was quickly curtailed by riot police, no further trouble occurred before kick-off.
In the first half there was a small bit of Red-on-Red aggro due to one little drunken group saying the wrong thing to the wrong people but the police weren't interested and it was over pretty quickly. Then when Scholes was sent off the Roma fans to the bottom left of the United section launched a missile assault, some of which was reciprocated. After their goal they then charged the dividing wall, which again about 30-40 United fans at the bottom left reciprocated. The police were quickly in and pushed back the United fans, but note that this incident was nothing to do with the trouble seen on TV.
That was initiated by one guy much further up and more centrally on the terrace arguing with one of the police near an exit (presumably about the Roma fans' missiles). The copper in question then just starting whacking him with his truncheon which enraged his mates and other Reds stood close by. They were then attacked by the small group of police stood by this exit and it seemed to be over. That was until the stroke of halftime when more police crowded that exit and then attacked just as another group of police did the same from the exit further round to the right. This created a crush of people seeking to escape the pincer movement and falling on top of each other down the terrace whilst those nearest the exits got battered, as seen on TV pictures. That guy who was shown getting leathered had already copped for the worst of it after failing to escape the first wave, and presumably had thought that by sitting down to nurse his wounds he'd be alright. It wasn't like he'd done anything anyway, he was simply too slow to escape. Cue the police then twatting him another 10+ times in the second wave. Meanwhile over to the right hand exit was a guy clean out - everyone thought he was dead, from the truncheons or the pile-on as people slipped down the terrace no one was sure. When people went up to the police appealing for help, despite all their armour they refused to enter the terrace to get him and he was eventually carried out by four Reds. Presumably he's ok, but there were a good few fearing the worst for him.

From somebody who was there

Lex Luthor

Moral of the story is: Don't argue with Italian police at a football match

Thanx 4 The Fish

And completely unbiased obviously, I am sure that the poor Man U fans were going around minding their own business with their heads down....

Have you got any quotes from Roma fans ? I am sure they will maintian that they were just as innocent in all of this as the Man U fans claim to be...

Livvie

Thanx 4 The Fish wrote:

And completely unbiased obviously, I am sure that the poor Man U fans were going around minding their own business with their heads down....

Have you got any quotes from Roma fans ? I am sure they will maintian that they were just as innocent in all of this as the Man U fans claim to be...

Are you completely unbiased?

I think it's obvious to the world and his wife that no-one was blameless, but no doubt views will be clouded by whichever football team you happen to support.

I've heard this argument before, in different circumstances - where the police were blamed by one set of fans, whilst others were convinced that the fans themselves instigated the problem.

It's very negative and not at all constructive.

PHB

And completely unbiased obviously, I am sure that the poor Man U fans were going around minding their own business with their heads down....

Have you got any quotes from Roma fans ? I am sure they will maintian that they were just as innocent in all of this as the Man U fans claim to be...

I'll ask again,
T4TF, why couldn't the police do what they did to the Roma fans? Why couldn't they just wade in to stop the trouble like they did with Roma fans? What is the difference between the Roma and United fans?

BKtje

of course not t4tf but this isn't the first time english fans have been attacked in this very same city vs the exact same fans/police. Is it just a coincidence that supporters from different clubs meet the same kind of fate?

No one here is saying the manu fans covered themselves in glory but we've read a couple different accounts and they are both very similar (whether you want to believe that both these accounts are real or not only you can decide). Put these accounts alongside what we saw with prone fans being attacked we can pretty much guarantee there is some truth in this surely?

I still think the biggest issue is not with the Roma fans but rather the police's handling of it. Morons will always be morons but the police as a whole are supposed to protect the peace and the innocent. Neither of these things seem to have been achieved, especially seeing as only one set of fans bore the brunt of the police's batons.

Seaneh

MisterAnarchy wrote:

Have to say I agree with Townsend.
Totti is grossly overrated.
He was almost playing in front of his own back 4 tonight.

he's not a striker, what do you expet, for him to stand with his back to goal and wait for balls to be pinged at him?

therecklessone

James Richardson in Friday's Daily Mail:

Italian football has experienced plenty of crowd problems over the past few months and just this week the government approved tough new anti-hooligan laws, doubling the penalties for assaulting a policeman and authorising four-year jail sentences for anyone carrying a firework or flare near a stadium on match days.

But the beating United fans took on Wednesday has little to do with that. After all, 10 years ago we had almost identical scenes at this stadium during England’s World Cup qualifier against Italy: visiting fans brutally beaten back by riot police while home supporters stood untroubled yards away.

A decade on, the problem remains.

The police are not in control of most Italian stadia, and piling into the visitors is one of their only options if trouble occurs. On Wednesday the police were stationed only on United’s side of the crowd partitions while stewards ‘controlled’ Roma’s curva, the curved part of a stand where the club’s hard-core support congregate.

Why?

It wasn’t because the police are partisan, and certainly not because Roma fans are well-behaved. Far from it. The fact is police are not allowed into the curva by Roma’s own supporters. The lay-out of these ends, with thousands of hard-core fans packed on broad, ranging terraces accessible only from a few narrow entrances, means the police will not enter for fear of triggering bigger trouble which they can’t handle.

One veteran officer said after the death of a carabiniere in Sicily in February: "We can’t set foot in the curvas. It would be regarded as an act of war."

Badly-paid and hampered in their work by a justice system that has only recently started to take hooliganism seriously, Italy’s stadium police and carabinieri are not a happy bunch. On Wednesday night United’s fans paid the price, just as England supporters at the Olympic Stadium had a decade before.

Aggravating the situation in both cases was the fact that these fans were English. The Heysel disaster may have been 20 years ago and fan violence now a far worse problem in Italy than here but, to the Italians, travelling English fans still spell trouble. Better to beat them back first and ask questions later.

It might have been wiser for United’s pre-match communique to have included a warning to their fans about charging at ranks of massed riot police or throwing plastic seats at them.

Yesterday’s Italian papers dismissed the incidents with a few lines on the ‘usual problems’ involving English fans, but outrage in England eventually turned it into headline news.

Still, don’t expect any apologies — nobody in Italy has any illusions about the quality of stadium policing, but the day when English fans get any sympathy is a long way off.

Mr. Presentable

I agree, the English fan has a rep that follows him. Iirc, after the Italy-Ireland game in 1990 WC, the police formed a guard of honour for the Irish leaving the stadium and applauded their behaviour. So it's not every country's fans that get treated poorly

raven136

Trouble between chelsea and spurs,racist chanting by a small minority of liverpool fans towards momo,everton and liverpool matches fetting worse.

is english football as clean as we all now think it is?