Three years since the chaotic scenes that overshadowed England’s Euro 2020 final, Wembley Stadium will play host to the Champions League final between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid on Saturday.
The final, the showpiece of the European club game, is the biggest men’s match at the national stadium since England’s penalty shootout defeat to Italy that turned into a “day of national shame” with 19 police officers injured and more than 50 arrests.
The mayhem of that day was the subject of a recent Netflix documentary that detailed the wild and drunken scenes on Wembley Way before thousands of ticketless fans stormed the stadium.
In the aftermath, an independent review published by Baroness Louise Casey said it was a miracle nobody died that day.
However, as Wembley comes under the spotlight again on Saturday night, organisers insist lessons have been learnt since the lawless carnage of Sunday July 11, 2021.
So what’s changed, what can travelling fans expect and how has Wembley tried to beef up its security between now and then?
Five months after the Euro 2020 final disorder, Baroness Casey published her independent review, commissioned by the Football Association which runs the stadium.
Baroness Casey, who later led a review into the behaviour and internal culture at the Metropolitan Police, said there had been a “collective failure” in preparing for the match, including a “vulnerable” stewarding operation and the police deployment arriving too late (at 3pm) as they were in central London.
She said “ticketless, drunken and drugged up thugs” could have caused death that day.
Fans had been emboldened to illegally target Wembley because Covid-19 restrictions meant there were 25,000 empty seats in the 90,000 stadium, which contributed to a “perfect storm”. There were found to be 17 mass breaches of disabled access gates and emergency fire doors.
FA chief executive Mark Bullingham apologised for the “terrible experience” many fans experienced, accepting the findings of the Casey report.
Baroness Casey’s review included a number of key recommendations, one of which related to security around Wembley.
The first part was completed in 2022 which included making turnstiles and accessibility entrances more secure and having locks on all perimeter doors tightened up.
A new command and control centre was also created, with more than 50 CCTV cameras added. This also allows security to monitor events going on outside the stadium as well — for example what’s happening at the nearby Green Man and The Torch pub — to provide a greater understanding of fan behaviour in the lead up to a game.
Work then started in autumn to boost security further, with the construction of a gated portal, 3.6m fencing (11ft 8in) and enclosed roller shutters at the Club Wembley entrance, as well as a new external entrance lobby with reinforced interlocking doors to prevent unauthorised entry from the Olympic steps.
These modifications have been fitted externally to “act as a visual deterrent” to fans looking to sneak in without a ticket.
Stronger gates have also been fitted to the media, staff and VIP entrances. Extra perimeter fencing has been installed next to entrances, fixed on top of the existing parapet, to stop fans scaling the wall.
England fans climb aboard a bus outside the ground before the Euro final in 2021 (Photo: Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)
Now completed, it means more than £5m has been spent since the Euro 2020 final on tightening up security around the stadium. These measures were all in place for last weekend’s FA Cup final between Manchester United and Manchester City.
In addition to this, they have boosted the number of stewards at Wembley as the industry has bounced back from Covid, providing them with extra training and more body cameras. Saturday will see the highest-ever stewarding deployment at Wembley, along with a large police presence.
In light of those changes, Baroness Casey passed Wembley as “match fit” in November 2023 and now ready to host Saturday’s Champions League final. However, she added that tailgating — where a ticketless fan rushes in behind someone — was still a problem.
Chris Bryant, director of tournaments and events at the FA, said they had been preparing for Saturday’s showpiece event for the last 18 months. He said: “We never saw events like that at the Euro 2020 final and I’m not sure if we’ll ever see them again, but it’s obviously incumbent upon us to ensure that we’ve learnt the lessons and implemented additional measures.”
He added: “When you watch the Netflix documentary, I can’t help but be incredibly sad that that was not the day that was fair and right for many people, be it the staff working here, be it the fans that genuinely had tickets, it was a very difficult and disappointing day, it was not the way we deserved to end the tournament.
“A massive amount of work has gone in with the staff and this team and our stakeholders and that’s why I think we got so much buy-in. I think everyone does see this [Saturday night] as an event of national significance, it’s a chance to prove that London is fantastic at delivering big events and Wembley as a home of big football matches and we can do this very well.”
On Saturday, Dortmund fans have been given Hyde Park as their designated area of London, while Real Madrid supporters will be at Victoria Embankment.
Dortmund’s fans will also take part in a defined route march, planned with the club and the authorities.
The 2013 final, which also featured Dortmund, generated in excess of £50m for the city of London, so it’s expected to be significantly higher this year.
UEFA will be desperately hoping for a smooth final at Wembley this weekend after both the 2022 final in Paris and last year’s in Istanbul were marred by shambolic organisation to the detriment of the travelling fans.
This will be the third time Wembley has hosted the Champions League final since the 2007 rebuild.
Geoff Pearson, a leading expert in football hooliganism, helped contribute to the Casey report.
“I thought it (the Euro 2020 final) was the perfect storm,” he told The Athletic. “It was a number of factors that were exceptionally unusual and it all essentially went down to the fact the government thought it could host a major international tournament without making any provision for what the ticketless fans were going to do which, to me, demonstrated a lack of knowledge about how English football supporters behave.
“We’ve seen big games at Wembley since then — the Manchester derby twice in the FA Cup final, for example, so I am still of the view it was such an unusual set of circumstances, it’s highly unlikely we will see this again in the foreseeable future. However, with hosting any football match, we need to be careful and not get into a false sense of security because when you’ve got so many people attending these types of matches, then this is something you’ve got to plan for.”
He said another big change at Wembley since the Euro 2020 final was the fact they have made the areas around the stadium alcohol-free — which made it less attractive to those thinking of turning up without a ticket.
There are also now extra ticket checks before you reach the stadium by the turnstiles. All tickets for the final will be digital only and there will be three separate checks before entering the stadium — one at the outer secure perimeter, next before entering a queue line and finally at the turnstile itself.
“That is going to make a difference in terms of people trying to tailgate through the turnstiles,” Pearson said. “I remain of the view that Wembley is not physically set up very well defensively against people that are trying to get in once they get to the outside of the stadium bowl, so trying to stop them getting into that space is a big challenge and that’s one of the main changes that’s happened.”
Pearson also said the final between Dortmund and Real did not pose the same challenges compared to if a big English club, such as Manchester United or Arsenal, had got there.
So with all eyes on Wembley again this weekend, organisers will be hoping it all goes off without a hitch to try to put the ugly events of the Euro 2020 final behind them.
(Photo: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
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