England fans are causing chaos in Frankfurt, Germany as shards of glass from broken bottles fill the streets ahead of the Three Lions’ Euro 2024 clash with Denmark on Thursday.
The Daily Express’ Zak Garner-Purkis is reporting from the scene in Frankfurt, where around 30 police officers are monitoring England supporters.
Old men and women who appear to be homeless are collecting the smashed bottles. They joined in with the ’10 German Bombers’ chant seemingly not aware of its meaning.
The floor at the scene is sticky with spilled beer. A ragged football is also being booted around the main square.
The overwhelmingly male crowd of England fans are mostly peaceful but there is an edge in the atmosphere given the risk of a rogue bottle of beer hitting someone.
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Two German fans walking by told the Express: “We like the England fans, they are cool.
“The atmosphere is better here than with the German fans.”
Many of the English fans will have traveled from Gelsenkirchen, where England commenced their Euro 2024 campaign with a narrow 1-0 win over Serbia.
One England fan and seven Serbs are facing criminal charges after a brawl involving 150 people before the game.
Gelsenkirchen’s chief of police, Peter Both, said it was not clear who started the violence.
He said: “The Serbian fan group was already in the restaurant and obviously ate there and then a larger group of English fans then tried to get into this restaurant as well. And that’s exactly what sparked the dispute.
“What we can hardly say now, of course, in retrospect, is did the Serbs refuse entry to the English or did the English provoke the Serbs? Of course, this can hardly be brightened up afterwards. The fact is that when they tried to enter the pub, there was an immediate physical altercation.
“We subsequently made several detentions. We carried out a total of around 50 identity checks. We took eight fans into custody before the game, who were then unable to watch the game.
“If we had predicted in the opening press conference that there would be one detention [of an England fan], then we would all have gladly taken it.
“Why did the police only take seven or eight people into custody when there were 150 people running around? The first issue is that you can only take someone into custody if you can make an individual accusation.
“So the ones where we can say either via video recordings or via personal evidence from deployed police officers, I can prove that you threw this chair, you threw this glass, you hit that one, have seen that, I can prove it – only those are then taken into custody accordingly.
“We have everyone’s personal details and are now in contact with the organiser, with Uefa, because we would already make a recommendation to Uefa. They can see if these people still have tickets for other games and we would recommend that these tickets are then blocked for the next games.”
England’s fixture against Denmark on Thursday has been classified as ‘high risk’ but alcohol restrictions have been relaxed for the game.
