I know what you’re thinking. Where can I watch a man stand up and above in the middle of a crowd and openly snort cocaine to the cheers of his adoring audience? Where can I watch an inebriated grown man clutching a plastic bag stuffed with cans of lager climb on top of a bus and then be slide tackled flat onto the roof of that bus by another inebriated grown man? Where can I watch an out-of-shape grown man holding a half drunk can of lager climb up a lamppost and then be hit full in the face by not one but two other half filled cans of lager? And where can I watch a massively intoxicated grown man dancing completely naked in front of thousands of other massively intoxicated grown men, everyone smashed on a violent mix of coke and lager and coke and lager and coke and lager and not really a great deal of anything else besides? The answers to these crucial questions, and many others that you never thought you would need to ask, can be found in a blisteringly watchable, simultaneously hilarious and depressing documentary on Netflix called The Final: Attack On Wembley.
I cannot recommend this documentary enough, especially if you want to get a razor sharp education in what happens when you mix men and football and leave them to their own devices. The match in question was the Euros final in 2021, the climax of a competition that had been delayed for a year by Covid and lockdown. It was also the first time an England football team had reached the final of a major competition since 1966 and was therefore cause for a little celebration. And that would have been appropriate – a little celebration, a soft pat on the back, a glass of sherry and a warm, well deserved glow of satisfaction. Instead, we got unbridled mayhem as legions of (and you’ll have to forgive me for a brief volley of foul language) stupid fucking cunts congregated outside Wembley Stadium and across the streets of central London to give us a vision of hell on earth that we haven’t seen since, oh I don’t know, the Poll Tax riots. It’s frightening stuff, what grown men are capable of when they get dosed up on adrenaline, narcotics and alcohol. There are some feeble attempts to blame the privations of lockdown for what came to pass but I don’t think that has a whole lot to do with it; put enough silly arseholes in the same place and it would happen every single time.
I won’t let any more juicy details out of the bag but I insist you give The Final: Attack On Wembley a watch. You don’t have to be a football fan to watch it, and if you’re not then don’t worry – this definitely won’t make you change your mind. The carnage on display staggers drunkenly to the very edges of the imagination and when I watched it there were moments when I started to wonder just how gratifying it might have felt to unwrap a Gatling gun and let rip on the mindless, futile fury of it all, holding the trigger down and watching grim-faced as bullets scythed through soft, sick fat and punctured beer bloated stomachs; every badly painted George Cross offering up another target, another idiot, another solution to a problem that should never have been there to start with. But even that would have been unfair – there were, after all, plenty of sane, calm and rational fans that day who had bought tickets and just came to watch a football match end enjoy themselves. Christ almighty, that must have been a miserable afternoon on Wembley Way.
And now we have the 2024 Euros. We all know that the wise try to reflect back on events from the past and learn from them, so that the same mistakes can be avoided for future generations, but when it comes to the average hardcore England fan a reflection is just something that just comes back at them from the mirror they’re about to do a line of coke off. Tomorrow there will be vivid scenes of a pasty-bellied nature as fans ruin a perfectly nice afternoon in Gelsenkirchen. Their match against Serbia has been deemed high-risk enough to warrant allowing only low-alcohol lager in the stadium, but by that stage it will be to late because many of the sharpest England fans will have used all their wile and cunning to get slack-bladdered ahead of the game, only to then spend the whole match pissing on their own feet. Apparently, Serbian fans can be a bit handy, especially certain far-right leaning individuals, so it will be interesting, even entertaining, to see a few supporters who just couldn’t let it go being repeatedly tasered in the genitals by great grandchildren of the Gestapo before being escorted out of the stadium by a gang of angry police Dobermans.
Of course, England will only be walking a path that Scotland got to first. The so-called Tartan Army (an army that neatly provides a textbook definition of what cannon fodder should look like) turned up several days early for their opening match, promising to “get the party started” by offering the bemused residents of Munich an incomprehensible cacophony of bagpipe noise and then proceeding to get mashed on a wide menu of lagers; every beverage sharing a near identical taste and the magical ability to give them raging heartburn and a foul hangover, both of which will have stayed with them long into this morning and well after they were sick in the kettle and wet the hotel bed they shared with three mates; y’know, because they’re tight. The suitably brave Scottish team were dreaming of a very rare and famous win over their German hosts but they must have forgotten not only who they were playing but also what sport, and were soundly thumped, humped and pumped to the tune of 5-1 (the only goal they clocked up came off a German defender but was greeted with rampant delight by any fans who hadn’t already left to drown their sorrows with a cluster of Jagerbombs).
Anyway, what does it matter. I like football, but I can’t ever go as far as to say I love it. For the most part it sits somewhere in between taking it or leaving it, so it can be hard to appreciate that for some people the sun rises and sets with whatever the latest thing Jack Grealish has done to his hair. As I write this I am nearing the end of a match between Hungary and Switzerland and I think I am safe in saying it is turning out to be exactly as thrilling as you would imagine (perhaps that’s why some fans take so much marching powder, just to keep them awake), though in fairness it is still a lot more entertaining than watching Gary Lineker do or say anything at all. Or Ian Wright. What football at the thin end of the wedge really seems to do is bring out the worst in people, in particular a certain sort of grown British man. The sort of man who has dates tattooed onto his calves so he won’t forget he is a father of six, and who forgoes traditional luggage and simply turns up at the airport with his belongings in a Tesco bag-for-life. I wonder how we ended up like this. And I wonder where England will get in this tournament and if we manage to embarrass ourselves off the pitch. I also wonder how many fans will never get to see a ball kicked because they took it all a bit too far and then spent the match being shit on in a German prison cell. It’s a funny old game, but just a little short on laughs. Watch that documentary. You’ll see what I mean.
G B Burton. 15.06.2024
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 