Shit turned very sour in Marseille last night amid the 1-1 draw between England and Russia in the Euro 2016 game. It got so bad that one guy suffered a cardiac arrest and six more were reported to have suffered serious injuries.
Images VIA
All of this occurred after a gang of 20 Russian football hooligans all dressed in black came out with the intent of “hunting” down the English fans. Reports state that the Russian supporters went into the England crowd areas of the ground after the final whistle. People were seen climbing fences in a bid to escape from the gang but regardless, fights broke out within the stadium.
Ugly clashes at the end of #ENG 1 #RUS 1 pic.twitter.com/YCVox0Veij
— Simon Peach (@SimonPeach) June 11, 2016
In addition, the Russian gang emerged into the streets of Marseille where they looked for fights with any English people they could find. One guy was jumped after getting split up from his buddies, causing him to suffer from a cardiac arrest. According to local media, the police said he was “between life and death.”
#EURO2016 à #Marseille : frappé par des Russes, un supporter anglais entre la vie et la mort https://t.co/5YoWKcVd3E pic.twitter.com/v0wzAwsHN3
— La Provence (@laprovence) June 11, 2016
Apparently the paramedics managed to bring the guy back and he showed signs of life after a couple of minutes of CPR.
Clashes like this have been happening for the past few days, but this is by far the worst night of them all. Marseille pretty much resembled a war zone yesterday and the Russian gang were going IN on people so hard, they were even slashing them with knives and beating English fans up with metal poles.
Although the riot police did rock up and fire tear gas to disperse the fights, questions are now being raised about whether the French police and local authorities were prepared enough for a match that was such an obvious danger and why the bars and pubs were allowed to stay open and serve up booze in the run up to the match.
I mean, I think it was predictable that riots were going to break out, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for just how violent and out of hand they got. It totally overrode the fact that there was even a football match on. Let’s just hope that there aren’t any more casualties as a result of the rioting.
Still, these riots were bad but I don’t think they’ve got anything on the top five worst ones of all time.
