Yob England fans the world’s worst losers

What is also obvious is that in the immediate aftermath of the game, elements of the football authorities tried desperately to underplay the violence.

The pictures from outside and inside Wembley and from the centre of London were shocking but not surprising.

As yobs went on the rampage, Italian fans, restaurants, kids in wheelchairs, police officers, buses, cinemas, theatres and shops were targeted for no reason other than they were there.

For goodness sake, even the less-than-imposing pillars at the end of a relative’s tiny driveway outside her home in a London suburb were knocked down by passing England fans.

Elsewhere, another fan thought it hilarious earlier in the day to stick a lighted flare up his rear end, clearly endangering what brains he had.

The mayhem before kick-off as fans breached security to get into the capital of football reminded me of the storming of the Capitol building in Washington in January.

The FA — it actually stands for the Football Association — took a leaf out of Donald Trump’s fake news book by claiming that only a small number of fans were involved, but the pictures showed hundreds, if not thousands, of ticketless fans flooding into Wembley.

Inside the concourse, supporters with tickets decided to teach the interlopers a lesson by kicking and punching the daylights out of them in an unusual case of the s**** hitting the fans.

The atmosphere in the stadium was, I’m told, poisonous, with parts of the ground over-run and totally overcrowded, leading to many fans getting abuse when they tried to claim their seats. There were also reports of families leaving long before half-time because they were frightened for their children.

But watching the TV news on Sunday, you’d have thought the English fans were having a harmless pre-match party, with not even a sense of caution sounded that some of them were drinking 12 hours before kick-off.

Later on, the reports focused on the fans’ ”disappointment” over the result, with only the briefest mentions of the chaos.

Belatedly, the media did wake up to the real story, and the reports, particularly in the Independent, were horrifying.

Before long, the thugs had moved on, with many English fans who had given their boots a break letting their fingers do the talking by racially abusing the three players who missed penalties in shoot-out after extra time failed to provide a winner.

Even my gloating at England’s failure was tempered by my feeling sorry for Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and, particularly, Bukayo Saka, who was disconsolate.

Of course, the three young stars were not the first footballers to come under attack from their own fans. Just ask our own Neil Lennon, who was shamefully booed at Windsor Park after he joined Celtic and later received death threats.

England’s David Beckham also faced a backlash from fans, and a burning effigy, after he got himself sent off against Argentina at the World Cup in France in 1998 in a game which his country lost.

It just goes to show that you don’t have to be black to earn the wrath of English fans, but it certainly added grist to their mindless mill last week.

All in all, the Euros final wasn’t just a defeat on the pitch for the English, but also a major setback to their bid to stage the World Cup finals in 2030 with Ireland.

It beggars belief that Fifa would take the risk of bringing the tournament to England. The policing arrangements around Wembley looked pitifully inadequate and scientists have predicted that the decision to allow 60,000 fans into the ground will be found to be a factor in the latest spike in Covid infection rates.

Social distancing appeared to have been given a wide berth by fans, which was in marked contrast to my first live game in Belfast since March last year.

At the Linfield v FK Zalgiris Vilnius game at Windsor Park last week, there were all sorts of regulations in place, with the 1,000 masked fans having to sit five seats and four rows apart, unlike the Euros final.