A Weekend in Marseille: Tear Gas, Culture, Russians and…Football

I was in Marseille from Friday to Monday with Andrew Gibney and my friend Lawrence, to see England v Russia and soak up the France 2016 atmosphere. We got rather more than we bargained for… 

On Friday morning my biggest worries about going to Marseille were if my train would actually show up and whether the meteo would stay at ‘bit cloudy’ or revert to saying that there would be driving rain on Saturday night. That, obviously, was before I looked at my computer.

This first episode seems to have been a clash between early-arriving fans who were confronted by aggravated locals; there was much focus on the police response, of teargas and batons, described by Geoff Pearson to the Guardian as “completely disproportionate”. That’s true, but it was also completely predictable given how the French police handle domestic football matches. As Kevin Miles of the FSF said, these methods are not what the England fans are used to. It seemed unlikely, however, that they would move on calmly with this new information, as more fans arrived the next day. It seemed nailed on that things – both the initial clashes and the police response – were going to get worse.

So, we were having a crepe and a drink at one of the cafes dotting the Cours Honore d’Estienne d’Orves, a bit off the Rive Neuve, and were concluding that the plan to interview people about the Battle of Marseille in 1998 might not be a great idea given what had happened the previous day, when some people came running towards us, away from the port. I was trying to work out if the hovering cloud behind them was a fire, or a flare, and then my eyes started stinging. Some of the people escaping were leaning on walls, coughing up, eyes streaming. Tear gas. One told us that England fans had been throwing bottles at the police. We scarpered. And walked past a small group, washing out their eyes, one of them saying “if they’re going to be rude to us, I’ll be rude to them. We’re here, we’re taking over.”

Rude. Now there’s a fairly bizarre choice of words. And a pretty terrifying attitude.

As we walked back up the hill to safety, there were sirens. The Marseille residents must be sick of that sound by now. The CRS were coming; a dozen vans, in convoy, heading for the port. As things degenerated down there, up at Notre Dame du Mont there was a very different vibe. Watching France v Romania at the PMU, next to the Metro, we met a group of young England fans, who had been directed up there by a local who had got them away from the trouble in town. They also told us that it had been the England fans throwing bottles at the police who had started the earlier chaos. Here, however, one member of staff tended a barbecue, others found chairs from wherever they could for the crowd on the terrace, they were still running ‘table service’, our new friends started an “Allez les Bleus!” chant in front of the tricolore-draped building and the locals joined in, and Dimitri Payet put in his late winner. There were no police anywhere, and everyone got on just fine.

On Saturday morning there were reports of Wales, Slovakia and France fans getting together and singing in Bordeaux. There had been clashes in Nice, Mark Simpson reporting that the Polish and Northern Irish fans were getting on great, and this had been caused by local gangs attacking them. I was saddened to realise that I had known how to say ‘teargas’ in French the day before – and I moved my boric acid eyewash from my sponge-bag to my handbag just in case.

We started the day with a walk to a social / cultural / arts centre to see a photography exhibition, because not meaning to live up to a stereotype, but that’s how we roll. When we got back into the centre there was a huge crowd of England fans on the port, singing and kicking footballs around. It all seemed jovial enough.

We found a nice little bar on the corner of Rue Breteuil and Rue Sainte to watch Albania v Switzerland, and got talking to some more England fans after tips for where to go in Lille (Gibney all over that one) and just wanting to chat about the football. It was very pleasant, and an interesting match – characteristic Cana and good goalkeeping.

We left, walking up, and left onto Rue Grignan to get back up the hill; and then people came running in fear past us, and we turned to see a group of maybe a hundred men charging – charging – down Rue Breteuil towards the port. The Russians were here, plain clothes and looking…focussed. Two minutes later and we would have been directly in their path. We bumped into some more England fans, just arrived, with no idea what to do – “but we have to get over there…” said one, staring wide-eyed at where the charge had just happened. “Why can’t everyone be nice to each other?” asked his friend, looking the same way. I did my mother hen bit again – if you see trouble, get clear, it’s not just the teargas, the police use flashballs, people have lost eyes, ‘innocent bystander’ is nothing, don’t stay to film, get clear, get clear, #casti, #lex, #maxime…

Even from the refuge of Notre Dame du Mont we can hear the sirens. It’s 6pm.

So, I was thinking that – particularly after the events of the past three days – security would be tight at the Velodrome. Not so much. People were touting tickets openly. No ID checks. My bag check was perfunctory – she took my water bottle, which I was expecting, but didn’t even ask to see inside most of the compartments of my handbag. The stewards at the Mosson do a more thorough job when they know there will be no trouble anyway.

Inside, the stewards didn’t seem to know their way around their own stadium; we lost Gibney for a while as he was directed to the wrong seat by two different stewards, then had to let a man clad in one of those templar knights outfits walk past our entire row because they’d got his block wrong as well. The much-vaunted total smoking ban went for a total burton, and our whole section was standing with no attempt to get us to sit. It looked like the FFF’s responsibility “for private security at the stadiums and the volunteer programme” didn’t even mean that the usual Velodrome staff were in place. And these were, presumably, the people manning the thin yellow line between the Russian fans and the neutral block where chaos reigned at the end of the match.

We walked back into town.

On Sunday morning I went to the Musee Cantini and a wander around the port. There were fragments of green glass stamped into every surface, between the stones and tarmac of the roadways and the slabs of the pavements, which also showed sporadic signs that there had been blood here, on the ground. There were guys deep into their pints shortly after 11am. But the sun was shining, the market was open, and the boats were filling up with tourists going to see the islands. This was a Marseille separate from the alternate universe of running street battles, tear gas, thrown furniture. Only those tiny fragments of green glass connected the two.

And the arguing had started. Some insisting that the trouble on Friday was not the fault of the English fans, contrary to what we had heard. The Russian charge on Saturday used as an excuse to wipe out the memory of the earlier clashes. I’d urge French speakers to start with this tweet and read his following posts:

Pas tout confondre dans l'analyse des évènements de Marseille: ce qui s'est passé aujourd'hui n'a rien à voir avec incidents d'hier et jeudi

— Bilel Ghazi (@BilelGhazi) June 11, 2016

There have been some great pieces written about this weekend – Iain Macintosh going back to his hotel to charge his phone before heading out again to cover the violence, Ken Early’s conclusion that the Russians were charging ‘an English myth’ (backed up by Ronan Evain’s observations in L’Equipe), the chilling AFP interview with one of the Russians involved.

The danger – that none of these pieces fall into, to be clear – is to see this weekend as a one-act tragedy, rather than a sprawling epic in which the protagonists changed, to shocking effect. The drunken fuckery of Thursday and Friday was amateur hour – while it probably makes no difference to the innocent bystanders and business owners ducking flying furniture, rinsing out their eyes, and calling their insurers – whereas the charge on Saturday was the professionals arriving. The Russians were a different animal. The deeply limited singing songs about German bombers in bars might have got to Marseille thinking ‘we’re here, we’re taking over’, but they were as ill-equipped to cope with the local police as their bare-chested sunburnt little Englandship was to equal the quasi-commando approach of organised gangs bent on violence, backed up by politicians who can deny there was any trouble in the stadium, who are actually congratulating their supporters. The English were sitting ducks on Saturday afternoon as the Russian group charged towards them. Before this weekend, the bad guys were the Russians making public threats to bring violence to the streets of Marseille – people weren’t happy with that. The dimwitted behaviour of some England fans on Thursday and and particularly Friday instead focused the attention on them. And when it came to deciding who to hit with a baton, that might have made a difference.

Sunday also brought rumours that ultras from Nice, Paris and Toulouse were on their way to Marseille to get involved, but things seemed calm. We watched Turkey v Croatia in a bar off Rue Pytheas, met more England fans and chatted. Some army guys wandered past, keeping an eye on things, one making a very casual stop in front of the TV to check the score. Later, we watched Germany v Ukraine in a French bar serving pizza as an English fan urged the large number of Germans present to sing their anthem louder. Again with the alternate universe.

There has been trouble elsewhere, in Nice, in Lille; and the news that a Northern Ireland fan died after falling from the promenade in Nice in a tragic accident. Six England fans have already been jailed and that number will presumably go up. But there are also lots of jokes about ‘trouble’ involving people bumping into other people by mistake and apologising and buying them pints. Because we have to do that; because this weekend in Marseille was so horrible. Because that’s how we roll – check everyone’s safe, then make jokes.

That’s a good thing. But there are so many questions. If a bear gets loose in a supermarket and somehow everybody gets out alive, we still need to ask – how the fuck did that bear get in that supermarket?

There are fears for a repeat of the Marseille situation as England fans heading to Lens for the game against Wales will crash back into Russian fans attending the game against Slovakia in Lille – particularly as English and Welsh fans without tickets were being advised to stay in Lille, in another piece of organisational standard-setting. You can imagine someone in an office looking at the full schedule for the first time and just thinking fuuuuuuuuuuu…….. While it is being reported that the Russian hooligans have already gone home, that will fray the nerves. The police will be on even more of a hair-trigger for the rest of the tournament and all we can do is hope that there are no more casualties.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I watched a football match. It ended 1-1.