Penned in cages. Tear-gassed by police. Forced to queue for hours by heavy-handed stewards. Locked in stadiums until midnight and enduring transport chaos.
This has been the reality of life for travelling supporters in European competition this season, with seemingly every fanbase having a horror story at their treatment by host clubs or local security forces.
When set against a general backdrop of disorder across the continent — from fatal stabbings in France to games being played behind closed doors in Greece or called off altogether in Turkey — it appears that life for away fans in Europe is grimmer than ever.
So, what is the reality? In the last week, The Athletic attended three games in two countries — Napoli vs Braga and Atletico Madrid vs Lazio in the Champions League, and Real Betis vs Rangers in the Europa League.
This is what we discovered.
Tuesday: Naples — Napoli vs Braga
It’s Tuesday on an unseasonably warm December day in Naples.
Fans have travelled from Braga, a Portuguese city with fewer than 200,000 inhabitants, before their final Champions League group game. SC Braga, who are 29 per cent owned by Qatar Sports Investments, which also owns Paris Saint-Germain, must overcome the odds and beat the Italian champions by two or more goals to progress.
Naples is a gloriously chaotic city, where honking scooters zip across the cobbled streets and a waft of hearty Italian cooking fills the air. It has a strong identity and a hardcore, passionate fanbase. Football is a religion here and Maradona is their god. The city itself feels like a shrine to their iconic No 10, with flags hanging from doors, paintings on the walls and the Maradona mural in Quartieri Spagnoli.
Braga, a small club even by Portuguese standards, have only brought around 300 fans so there’s no sense of menace or spice in the streets. For Braga fans, there’s no early pick-up point to collect their tickets and no long bus journey around the city to gate 26 that English clubs and bigger European clubs face when they visit Naples.
But if the Portuguese contingent that did make the journey were expecting a grand welcome, they would have been disappointed. Napoli’s Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, around 30 minutes west of the city centre via the metro, may boast a formidable atmosphere but it is also old, tatty and — frankly — crumbling.
Napoli’s stadium is boisterous but tatty (Tom Burrows/The Athletic)
Napoli, like most clubs in Italy, do not own their stadium — the ground belongs to the local city council, as is often the case in the country — and that limits what they can do when it comes to renovations.
From rusty turnstiles to vendors selling sambuca from boxes outside the ground, it feels a world away from a state-of-the-art stadium. Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis recently said: “Italian football struggles to wear dinner jackets during its own performances compared to other nations.” He said the state of their facilities “discredited” the country.
Not that this problem is unique to Italy. A couple of days later, images of Aston Villa’s away section at Zrinjski Mostar in the Europa Conference League make Napoli look like the height of luxury.
490 Aston Villa fans in the away end at Zrinsjski Mostar tonight. #AVFC pic.twitter.com/fUw2mysrtZ
— Football Away Days (@FBAwayDays) December 14, 2023
Encased by netting to shield fans from any missiles that may have been hurled by the locals and, with a fence effectively blocking the view of the pitch, it would be a surprise if many Villa fans would rush back to Bosnia if the teams were paired together again.
The same could be said for Arsenal at PSV Eindhoven on Tuesday, when their view of the pitch was so obscured by netting that many resorted to watching Eddie Nketiah’s goal on their phones.
Back in Naples, there’s no miracle for Braga as Napoli win 2-0 to progress to the knockout stage. Union Berlin’s defeat to Real Madrid guarantees them a place in the Europa League, so both sets of fans go home happy and there is no hint of trouble.
Wednesday: Madrid — Atletico Madrid v Lazio
It’s 5pm on Wednesday and the Lazio fans are starting to gather in Madrid’s Plaza del Cefiro, in the north east of the city, four hours before their game against Atletico. They have been told to meet here as police will escort them to the stadium. There are police with batons stationed on every corner of the square.
Both have already qualified so it’s a match to decide who tops Group E. There is not a huge amount riding on it but Lazio fans tell me this fixture always means something because of their close ties with Real and Atletico’s link to Roma, Lazio’s hated rivals. Plenty of Lazio fans spilling out of Canillejas metro station have Real scarves wrapped around their necks to demonstrate this. Compared to British fans abroad, there’s very little alcohol consumed.
Lazio have a notorious history of far-right, pro-fascist incidents. This ideology was cemented in the 1970s when Italy was bitterly divided between the far-right and far-left. Those supporters are in the minority, but remain extremely vocal. Against Celtic in this season’s Champions League, home fans at the Stadio Olimpico were filmed throwing flares into the away section and holding up anti-Irish sectarian banners, including one that said, “The famine is over, go home f***ing potato eaters.” In the Plaza del Cefiro before kick-off, chants laud Benito Mussolini, and there are grim racist songs and fascist salutes.
Lazio fans en route to Atletico Madrid (Tom Burrows/The Athletic)
Mauro, a Lazio fan, says lots of the club’s hardcore right-wing following is now being driven by younger fans. He rolls his eyes when his fellow Lazio supporters whistle at police trying to get them in position for their escorted walk to the stadium. “They should be careful. They’re even firmer here and in France than they are in Italy,” he tells me.
If Lazio’s reputation goes before them, the same applies to Legia Warsaw. The Polish club have earned an unwelcome reputation as one of Europe’s unruliest clubs this season, causing serious disorder at their Europa Conference League games against AZ Alkmaar and Aston Villa this season.
The ugly scenes outside Villa Park last month saw 46 people charged following clashes with police officers and, ultimately, no away fans were allowed into the stadium amid more fears of trouble. After an angry exchange of views between the two clubs, Legia fans were banned from their next five away matches in European competition by UEFA.
Police clash with Legia Warsaw fans outside Villa Park (James Baylis – AMA/Getty Images)
Clubs such as Legia have long had a notorious reputation. The same applies to Marseille, whose supporters recently attacked Lyon’s team bus, causing a serious facial injury to the visitors’ then-manager Fabio Grosso, and the hothouse of Greek football, where authorities recently banned all fans from stadiums for two months because of violence. Turkey, another historically volatile football environment, also paused their league campaign after Ankaragucu president Faruk Koca attacked a referee.
But it is striking that even lesser-known clubs appear to be cultivating a hooligan fringe and are making their presence felt. That feels particularly true in France, where a Nantes fan was stabbed to death before the club’s 1-0 win over Nice this month and a match between Montpellier and Clermont in October was abandoned when fans threw fireworks, injuring Clermont goalkeeper Mory Diaw. Last weekend, away fans were banned from attending eight games, including five in Ligue 1, while Sevilla fans were initially told they couldn’t attend their Champions League away game in Lens on Tuesday before a late U-turn.
Nowhere feels especially safe for travelling supporters in many European games — even the ‘posh’ seats. In May, hooded AZ fans tried to attack West Ham United supporters who were sitting in an unsegregated area of the AFAS Stadium reserved for players’ families, sponsors or directors’ guests. One senior source at a Premier League club, speaking to The Athletic on condition of anonymity, described this as “totally crazy”.
English fans have not escaped unscathed this season, either. Eddie McKay, a 58-year-old Newcastle fan, was stabbed before his side’s game with AC Milan in September, while Manchester City fans drinking in a Belgrade bar before Wednesday’s Champions League group game were attacked by a masked gang of Red Star fans.
There is no violence between Lazio and Atletico supporters on Wednesday, just a simmering air of menace that occasionally threatens to bubble over. As Lazio’s 3,000 fans — some of whom had been chanting about “s***ty Romanistas” during the one-hour walk to the Wanda Metropolitan stadium — arrive at the ground, a welcoming committee of home supporters, all dressed in black, sprint across the road. Riot police spring into action and the group melt the night.
Inside, it is quieter, with Atletico’s comfortable 2-0 win puncturing the spirits of the travelling contingent. Nonetheless, the Italians are held back in the ground until just before midnight when they are allowed to make the 40-minute metro trip back into the city.
Thursday: Seville — Real Betis vs Rangers
It’s Thursday in sunny Seville and Rangers are back in the southern Spanish city for the first time since their horrific experiences at the Europa League final in 2022.
Fans who attended the final at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan against Frankfurt complained of overzealous policing and a lack of food and water in almost 40C (104F) heat that led to people fainting.
This time, they are in the city to play Real Betis in a crunch Europa League match. The group game against Manuel Pellegrini’s side is part of a tasty month when they also have the Scottish League Cup final against Aberdeen on Sunday and face Celtic away in the Old Firm derby on December 30. Philippe Clement, who succeeded Michael Beale in the middle of October, was unbeaten in 12 games as Rangers manager going into the game.
Rangers fans make their presence felt in Seville (Tom Burrows/The Athletic)
Spirits are high in the city but Rangers fans are still angry over what happened two seasons ago. “It was shocking, we couldn’t get any water, it was boiling hot, there was no cover and the Spanish police can be overbearing, especially if you’re British,” Paul Langley, 71, said.
Rangers fans, many in shorts and T-shirts as opposed to the locals dressed in winter coats, are dotted around city centre bars and restaurants before gathering en masse at the picturesque Plaza de Espana as the party starts. From there, it’s the now familiar police escort to the stadium that takes just under an hour as a police helicopter circles above.
On arrival at Betis’ Benito Villamarin, around three miles to the south of the city, it’s clear that few lessons from last year have been heeded.
Fans who arrived 90 minutes before kick-off are still queuing outside when the match begins, with painfully slow security checks slowing progress to a standstill. Many fans are turned away because their ID doesn’t match the name on their ticket, exacerbating tension and causing a bottleneck of fans to build. One young fan looked distressed at being squeezed into the packed queue.
Rangers fans stuck outside Real Betis (Tom Burrows/The Athletic)
This, it seems, is fairly typical. Last month, Manchester United fans who travelled to Galatasaray faced a dangerous crush trying to get into Rams Park, which is located off a motorway about 45 minutes north of the city, and were then kept inside the stadium for 80 minutes after the game ended. By this time, the metro back into Istanbul had closed.
“The bottom line is we — standard-ticket-purchasing away supporters — don’t exist in anybody’s calculations when it comes to designing stadiums, putting on the events, allocating tickets, sorting out price structures, you name it,” Matt Ford, a freelance football journalist based in Germany, told The Athletic. “We’re bottom of the list, if we feature at all.
“The best result of that is it can just be an irrelevance, you go in, you go home and nothing happens. The worst case, and it’s not extreme to say, is that it can be fatal.”
Before the game, he described how Manchester United fans were crushed in a queue in a dark tunnel, tripping over wooden delivery pallets in front of turnstiles that weren’t working properly because no tickets were scanning, all while being surrounded by aggressive police officers.
Geoff Pearson, a leading expert in football hooliganism and a United fan, was also in Turkey.
He said: “Essentially, there was just one entrance that United fans could access. It took some fans over an hour to get in, standing in the rain. The checks on tickets were cursory, no tickets were scanned that I could see, and the security checks, in contrast, were completely over the top. The police were unnecessarily aggressive.”
After the game, a 3-3 draw, United supporters were kept in the ground for more than an hour with no communication about what was happening. And when they were finally released, the metro had closed and there were not enough buses laid on to ferry all the fans back to the city centre.
“You are then left at the mercy of taxi drivers,” said Ford. “The first one that arrived was charging $100. It’s midnight, it’s raining, no one’s had a sip of water in two hours.”
Newcastle fans had a similarly bleak experience after finding the Milan metro system closed following their trip to the San Siro in September, while Villa fans were stranded at Legia Warsaw when their buses failed to arrive after the game. Around 1,200 fans were eventually led back into the town by a police escort.
These experiences are not limited to English teams — Union Berlin fans endured similar frustrations at Real Madrid in their first Champions League away day in September — but Pearson suspects the country’s troubled past counts against them.
“Potentially, English fans have an unfair problem,” he says. “This mentality persists in several countries across Europe of English hooligans from the 1980s. English fans travelling away are seen as legitimate targets and they are simply not protected.”
Union Berlin fans had issues at Real Madrid (Stuart James/The Athletic)
Even Brighton & Hove Albion — one of the most benign fanbases in the Premier League — have found themselves treated as if they were likely troublemakers. At Marseille in October, the club’s first European away game, fans were held inside the Stade Velodrome for more than two hours after the final whistle. Some, who had started going down the stairwells to the exit gates, were then trapped there with no access to toilets, water or a seat.
One fan, Michael Sherrin, who has a neurological disorder, was filmed lying on the ground, in front of a group of baton-wielding police officers on the concourse. He said he was pushed to the floor by an aggressive officer.
Things were no better at AEK Athens last month, when fans were hit by teargas fired by police trying to disperse AEK fans.
“It wasn’t a pleasant experience,” Charlie Benny, a 24-year-old Brighton fan present that night, told The Athletic. “I have asthma so I fled back up the steps to more open air. For those who have more significant mobility issues, or in a wheelchair, or even younger children who maybe lose their parents in the furore, it’s a big concern.
“In Marseille, the police behaviour was a lot worse than in Athens. The style of applying police control is completely different abroad than it is back in the UK. It’s quite shocking for us.”
Such experiences tend to be easier to accept if your team has won, of course, and the memory of the chaos outside seems to have faded for most Rangers fans given how they celebrate their thrilling 3-2 win high up in the gods at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan. It is a result that secures their passage to the last 16 — and the chance to do it all again in February.
There are manifold reasons for this spike in football violence, although one possibly underappreciated factor is the after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“There were challenges to police and also security operations because experienced personnel disappeared after the pandemic,” says Pearson. “They had to be rebuilt. That first season back was very challenging. Domestically, things have settled down.”
One of the challenges in Europe is that, with the introduction of the Europa Conference League, there are more matches than ever before.
“On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, pretty much all the big teams in Europe are playing, there’s a huge number of matches and plenty of fallen giants,” Pearson adds. “Problems are going to be a regular occurrence as long as we have this number of games taking place.”
Short-term changes seem unlikely. UEFA’s handling of showpiece occasions in recent seasons — particularly the 2022 Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid in Paris, when fans endured a nightmarish experience — has not inspired many fans with confidence.
Police spray tear gas at Liverpool fans before the 2022 Champions League final (Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)
When contacted by The Athletic for a response to the experiences raised in this article, UEFA insisted it “consistently works towards enhancing the overall fan experience”, pointing to the existence of a joint working group focusing on away supporters and a partnership with the National Football Information Point to help improve the policing of matches. In a statement, they also pointed to the introduction of minimum requirements for wheelchair users, stronger ticket pricing regulations and a drive to ensure better facilities for away fans.
“Some clubs have been very active in this area,” it read, “but we acknowledge that more work still needs to be done.” Judging by the points raised in this piece alone, that feels like an understatement.
It is important to stress that many fans travel abroad to follow their team with no trouble at all. Take the Liverpool fans who visited LASK in Linz, Austria, this year and were greeted with warmth and hospitality from locals embracing the biggest game in their history; or the Aberdeen supporters who enlivened watching their team play HJK in a freezing Helsinki by starting a snowball fight with the hosts’ goalkeeper.
These trips should be moments to treasure. Yet, for too many, they prove an ordeal.
(Top photos: Getty Images/Tom Burrows; design: Eamonn Dalton)
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