MOSCOW: During England’s 6-1 rout of Panama on Sunday, Nizhny Novgorod’s city centre was running short on beer. Any of the city’s residents who would have walked in for a drink into one of the many pubs in the vicinity would have struggled to find a seat. Thousands of fans dressed in white had thronged every place that offered a pint.
Unlike what one may have imagined in such a setting, there were no drunk hooligans screaming at the top of their voices, knocking down chairs and wreaking havoc. There were the occasional chants. “Ooh aah, England are in Russia. Ooh aah, drinking all your Vodka” seemed to be a particular favourite. Those were replied to in kind by a group of Russian fans nearby. But it was all in good spirit, never exceeding the limits of banter.
The scene that many British media outlets chose to paint — of a bunch of drunk English hooligans taking on an army of well-trained Russian ultras — never came to pass. This has been a strangely uncharacteristic World Cup for the English. The Three Lions have made one of the best starts among everyone in the tournament; a stark contrast to the previous two editions, in which they won a total of one game and never made it past the Round of 16.
Despite this, their matches have been played out to audiences largely cheering for their opponents, with their fans failing to show up in numbers. But those who are have been here have mostly been extremely well-behaved, busting the stereotype of the drunk, troublemaking English hooligans.There have been the occasional incidents. An English fan was ejected from a train for trying to grab a policewoman’s gun, while a video of a few others doing Nazi salutes was circulated. But those are minor blips on the radar, negligible compared to the carnage that was expected.
Sunday in Nizhny was an example. Many people had turned up to the game with their kids, and there was nothing on show that would have made them concerned. The three thousand or so English fans at the venue chanted, beat their drums, and left the game in good spirits.Many fans admit that the way Russia is perceived by their government, and how the host nation was made out to be a dangerous, unsafe place by their media, played a role in the reduction in numbers. The British government had put in place a travel advisory recommending that fans should not travel to Russia.
“It is largely due to two things, in my opinion,” says George D, who has travelled down to Russia for the group stages but will leave before the knockouts. “One is the performance of England in the past decade at major tournaments. The second is that the mainstream media has continuously made the Russian government and the people seem foreign and dangerous.”
George believes that English fans being on their best behaviour has as much to do with their hosts as it has with themselves. “As for the actions of the fans so far, I believe that has repaired some of the stereotypes surrounding us. Most people will say that is because we are so few in numbers.”
“But I know that it is because the Russian people and authorities have made us feel welcome. They haven’t harassed or tried to provoke us in any way, from what I have seen. Volgograd (venue of England’s first game against Tunisia) was the best experience that I have had, and I am hopeful that it will continue for the fans who are staying.”
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com