More than half a million ticketless fans from across Europe are expected to travel to Germany for Euro 2024, with FA chief executive Mark Bullingham calling on England supporters to be “a tribute to their country”.
Many of those estimated 500,000 fans will, of course, come from the United Kingdom, with England and Scotland in action at Euro 2024.
Steve Clarke’s Scotland side face hosts Germany in Friday night’s tournament opener in Munich, two days before England open their campaign against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen in a Group C fixture that has been deemed “high risk” by the German authorities.
Bullingham understands that categorisation, but says the FA has had no warnings there will be any trouble and believes the decision is more to do with the geography around the stadium, while he also has total faith in the German police.
“In 2006 [at the World Cup in Germany], our fans were the fans of the tournament,” he told Sky Sports News. “Over the last few years I think we’ve shown our fans have been great supporters of the team and behave well.
“Obviously, you are going to have a big volume of people, so I think maybe that’s the factor that they do consider and we are expecting. I understand with that volume of people, they’ll be looking at that. But the reality is our plans are good.”
As for the match at the Veltins Arena, Bullingham has confirmed there will be no special protection for the players’ families at the ground.
“We always have support for the [players’] families in the stadium, but we’re not doing anything special for this game,” he said. “We’re looking forward to the game and think it’ll be a brilliant game.”
Bullingham (right) says there will be no special protection for the England players’ families at Sunday’s Euro 2024 opener vs Serbia
Bullingham admits, though, there is an element of unpredictability about how England’s travelling fans may behave in Germany, with only small numbers having attended the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar respectively.
“It will be a lot of fans, and a lot of fans who haven’t travelled before,” he said. “Because if you think of the last couple of tournaments away, we’ve had less than 5,000 fans [travelling]. It’s a different dynamic. But our fans have been really good the last couple of years, and it’s a brilliant support for us, and we hope that continues.”
Even so, he has called on the England supporters to now get behind their team and do their country proud while in Germany this summer.
“Over the last few years, I think the fans have given absolutely brilliant support to us, particularly in the stadium,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of people going to come out here.
“The best thing that the fans can do to help us do well in this tournament is be a tribute to the country, and we want them to do that, reminding them that in 2006 we were the fans of the tournament and they were brilliant then.
“I think we have the environment to do that. I think the German police have proved that they’re really good at policing football tournaments, so there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be the case again.
“But really, the main message is get behind the team and support in the right way.”
Why has England vs Serbia been classified a high-risk fixture?
Analysis by Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol:
“We need to keep things in perspective. League games, international games and games at tournaments, the local authorities always classify games at low risk, medium risk and high risk.
“This one has been classified as a high-risk game by the German authorities. That’s simply because of the reputation that England fans have historically had in the past and some Serbian supporters have also had.
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“What we do know as a fact without hyping anything up or sensationalising the potential for there to be any trouble is that there will be around 40,000 England fans going to the game at Gelsenkirchen and around five and eight thousand Serbian fans.
“The German police have some intelligence suggesting there may be around 500 Serbians who are looking to cause some sort of problem at the game but the German police are saying they can handle it and have a comprehensive plan in store.
“There will be beer available in the stadium although I think there is talk the beer is going to be not as strong as the beer available at other grounds. It’s going to be a little bit weak, and also you can only order two pints at a time inside the stadium and you can’t drink it in your seats – just the concourse.
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“But a lot of fans don’t actually like beer. I go to a lot of games, and I don’t drink beer at games. It’s not talked too much about the potential for there being problems.
“All the Serbian fans I’ve spoken to about this game are very excited and I’ve been told that the Premier League is incredibly popular in Serbia. They watch it every weekend. They all have their favourite teams and players and are really looking forward to this game on Sunday.”
FA funds police unit to catch those who abuse England players on social media
The FA, meanwhile, is to pay for a specialist police officer to investigate and prosecute anyone who racially abuses England players at the European Championships, which begin in Germany on Friday.
Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were each targeted with online hate after they missed penalties in the final of the last Euros at Wembley in 2021, and the FA is determined that – even though it cannot prevent such abuse happening again at this tournament – it will have measures in place to try to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Bullingham told Sky Sports News: “In the past, what we’ve done is pull together all the data – effectively an evidence pack – to give to the police.
“This time we’ve gone a stage further, where we’re actually funding someone within the UK Football Policing Unit, so within the British police. We’re actually funding a unit which will then prosecute.
“What we don’t want to do is create a pack that we then give to the police….but then they don’t have the resource to actually take that forward. This is to make sure that….if there are instances of the vile abuse we have seen before, it gets prosecuted.”
Bullingham says the initial cost is expected to be around £25,000 – but that could be more, depending on how many incidents the police need to investigate. The FA has enough resource set aside to fund as many investigations as are necessary.
“It depends how many prosecutions there are. It is a cost per investigation,” Bullingham added.
Chief constable Mark Roberts, NPCC lead for football policing, said: “As with all international tournaments, we will have a team of officers based at the UK Football Policing Unit throughout Euro 2024 to investigate reports of offensive messages posted on social media.
“If these messages meet a criminal threshold, those people posting the comments will be prosecuted and subsequently dealt with by the courts.
“Investigating these reports takes a significant amount of policing time and resource, and we welcome the support from the FA in funding a portion of these costs. We will continue to work with our partners to help prevent and tackle the issue of online hate.”