There is a mob mentality with football which you don;t get with other sports and yesterday

this will have been added to the fact that everyone thought there were going to be problems with the Russians so were sticking together and were also pumped up after what happened in Marseille.

so basically a big crowd builds up, drinks for a long period of time and becomes more and more rowdy and the mob mentality increases. it then only takes a spark to kick things off whether its two fans having a disagreement, third party involvement or the police wading in.

last night the two main incidents appear to have been provoked by Russians firing fireworks and then doing a runner and then later by the police wanting to disperse/break up a large group of fans. Clearly though there were also some fans out for revenge on Russians after Marseille. It all added up to skirmishes but in truth its probably involving 500 people out of about 30,000 in Lille and it perhaps appears worse than it is because every minor incident is caught by social media now and replayed endlessly on the news. gives the impression there was a mass riot whereas my understanding from people in Lille is you could be a few hundred yards away on another street and be oblivious to it all.

Clearly the Russians, perhaps because they had less numbers, did not really show up yesterday which is something to be thankful for because it could have really kicked off if they had done.

Posted By: Jim on June 16th 2016 at 11:47:39

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