Seeing O’Reilly’s was comforting – here we go again, I thought. Same bar, different country. I wasn’t worried one bit. I knew how this would end. What happened next was what always happened next.
Around 13.00, it was as though someone had scooped up around 150 England fans and dropped them in the bar within the space of a few seconds. It was game on.
We took our cue to exit to the street with our beers. As a pair, Simon and I were looking good – as two people, we would attract another pair, and we were natural allies. He was bigging it up for the North London massive – Spurs all the way.
Outside, the traffic was at a standstill. You could feel it rumbling. An open-top car with some bird waving a Brazilian flag in the front passed by slowly, and you could see exactly what was going to happen seconds before it did. ‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ some of our twats yelled.
The Burnley, Carlisle and, yes, the Huddersfield fans, were caught on camera bragging that they had never had a chance to mix it with the big boys! Well, support a team that might get into Europe other than for a holiday, then.
The heavens opened up on this vehicle, drenching the Latin girl. A group to my right threw their beer over her; one yanked the flag from her hand. They were jumping – despicable animals. Everyone tossed their beer in. I stopped myself from joining in.
At the same time, a German walked past, in between the adjacent railing and the road. I don’t know if it was one of the small-town lot but he got smacked in the face, chased out of town and kicked on the floor. It was definitely let’s-get-it-on time and, for him, it was because he was German. Some decent supporters tried to usher the poor, defenceless fan away only to receive abuse from their own.
‘Who the fuck are you? We’re England!’ St George screamed at St George.
Pathetic.
And we hadn’t even played yet. Unwittingly, England had created a no-man’s land. You walked through at your peril. The police were watching from the station, and I had one eye on them watching us. England had dominated O’Reilly’s at the sides, the front and the inside – the whole of the bar was rammed across that road, and all the racist bigotry was airing in song. ‘The only thing I want to do is slice a Muslim’s head off,’ one thug said on film.
I knew instantly that would make the cut. After a long period of chasing shadows in the undercover game, that gave me an adrenalin surge. I knew we were winning. Capturing hooligans or fans without tickets, bragging that they wanted to ‘get stuck into those Nazis’ was the only motivation I needed. This was typical football thuggery – nothing but cowardice at the heart of their argument. Shove them in front of al Qaeda and we would soon see.
At one point they turned on each other. ‘If it had been a Greek or a Paki, fair do, but one of your own,’ I picked up on camera. Brilliant footage, but disgusting, too.
All around, the England fans’ bottle was on the increase – in every sense. The lower the booze in the pint glass, the higher their bravado in their ego. Just like in 2000, the weapons of choice were glasses and chairs, and now it wasn’t England versus Brazil; this was Churchill versus Hitler – the Germans had turned up.
England surged. Jason and Nick were on one side of the road; Simon and I were on the other. Huddersfield, Wolves and – bloody hell! – Accrington Stanley were all giving it some as the police moved in from one of the side roads, battering everyone with sticks. Nick and Jase shadowed the Huddersfield thugs, while we moved towards the fight. The riot police even went for the Germans – this was a red rag to a bull. Taunting the home nation was a doddle after that.
Their undercover guys looked amateur, though. The British police were among them, but you could see the wires hanging from the spotters’ ears. They fitted the classic Nazi ideal – blond-haired, blue-eyed boys in classic German shirts, shorts and boots with a bum bag round their waist – but were borderline effeminate. None of them tried to mingle or disguise themselves as fans. This was their tactic and I think this is a legacy from the war and a divided Germany: they didn’t want the pictures of violence on German soil radiating around the world, so they stood there being obvious with radios in their pockets. Even if it had been nearly sixty years since the war, everyone would draw the same conclusion, and they just didn’t realise that the England fans wouldn’t give two hoots about a family-friendly Fanfest where everyone could mingle. It might have been their united showcase to the world, putting their transformation from brutal murderers to supremely socially tolerant economic heavyweights behind them, but that very background also propelled the worst of England to an international podium.
So keen were they to impress that prior to the tournament, the world’s media had been invited to an open day with the German police. They emphasised tolerance, and a ‘We will talk them down’ mentality was the ethos of the moment. If only they knew that 2006 was the same thing as 1944 for a generation of thugs who lived off their grandparents’ stories. It was almost as if the Germans had had a few bad years in the 1940s, and were actually now a decent lot; while back then we had hidden behind a gentlemanly facade and stood up to them, but what was happening now was the true norm for England.
‘Two world wars, one World Cup,’ they sang, as if their choice of tune justified all their actions. Idiots.
I warned Simon it would be tricky – he would watch for the cops, and I would get involved. As missions went, this was on a plate. All I had to do was stay close: they couldn’t help but brag, on camera, of course. Some Hells Angels – them again – complained like soft shites to the German police that one German gang had been staring at them for an hour. We were all asked to leave.
‘You fucking want it or not?’ they screeched into the lens.
‘Yeah,’ came the reply.
A Peterborough supporter confessed he was on the banned list. One fan, Ian, whom I would meet again, told me on film that he was Chelsea until he died. He had flown into Dublin and then onto Germany – he couldn’t believe how easy it was, despite his ban. We put our club loyalties aside to bond! ‘Come on, we can do these cunts. We’re England!’ And he meant it. On any other day, his Chelsea would meet my West Ham in a dark alley and get it on but not now, not when there was a war against the old enemy to be fought. ‘Let’s do the English Old Bill – the Germans won’t stick up for them,’ he declared.
What a twat. Did he even know there was a tournament on? I made sure we exchanged mobile numbers – that meant I was for real. Anybody with anything to hide would bullshit their way out of doing that.
Next, I ran into a guy called Frank who organised fights. That was what he did. He latched onto me because I was a Hammer, telling me that Frankfurt were coming to Upton Park and could we arrange a scrap. Would I like to come to ‘The Shop’ after the tournament to meet the owners and stock up on sadomasochistic gear and hooligan clothing? You couldn’t make it up. A pissed-up fight was one thing; an industry born out of violence another. It didn’t shock me; I just laughed. How the fuck did you get so off-track in life?
Normally, the thugs love a lens, but they were so pissed and violent that one of them attacked our 6ft 4in. cameraman Jonathan from behind, sending his equipment flying off his shoulder.
‘You fucking people are scum. You’re an Englishman, cameraman. You’re betraying us,’ reasoned the pisshead.
Jon recovered to catch a guy in an England shirt who had been hit with the pepper spray from the German police, leaving him separated from his own son, a mere teenager. This guy was caught up in it and was in no way a thug. As indiscriminate as the England aggression was, so were the actions of die polizei. The English disease, as Panorama later called it, was still rife twenty years after Heysel. If you were from the land of the Union Jack and you travelled the world watching the national team, something in your blood drove you overnight into chanting racist songs, verbally abusing innocent bystanders and then turning on yourselves once the beer had kicked in.
I was happy to live the role, but glad that my new career made me see t
hrough what I could have become. Yes, I snarled and sang the songs and, yes, Simon told me to be careful on the tapes for fear of over-encouraging the mob mentality, but I knew that I had to be credible. That meant that the double-edged sword that would take you right up to the front line to get the money shot induced everyone to follow: at this point, I would remember what I was doing and pull the charge back. At one point, I nearly got ram-raided.
My old mate Steve had turned up. I had been at school with his brother Paul, but Steve was now a stills photographer and we had seen each other on our respective world tours. He ran across the bar to me shouting ‘Craig, Craig …’
He was so pleased to see me that he jumped on me. ‘Are you working for the–’
I interrupted him. I grabbed him, hugged him and nearly fucking strangled him. He tightened up, almost rigid in shock. ‘I’m working undercover,’ I smothered him. Ushering him straight to the bar, I told him to shut the fuck up.
If he had blurted out ‘BBC’, we would have been in the shit, but I nailed him just in time. He was a big bloke, and very loud. He really could have blown this for us. Simon gave me the eyes to check everything was fine and Steve got the game too – realising it was time to get out, he made his excuses and left. He rang me the next day to apologise, not that he needed to. That was the curve ball I’d feared but he had read me like an old pro.
Occasionally it was hard, but to be the best, undercover in a football hooligan scenario, you had to ride that wave with radar eyes and walk that line – the one that meant everyone followed and looked up to you. Then you had to throw the Christians to the lions and get the hell out of there.
When we got to Stuttgart, I too became a Christian.
25 June 2006. England v Ecuador.
The national team had been at their most brilliantly average, scraping to victory against Paraguay in Frankfurt and then on to Nuremburg to play Trinidad and Tobago, before drawing with Sweden in Cologne. Like you, I can’t remember the results, except that we made the last sixteen, but I can’t forget that many of the fans went on a cultural visit to the balcony where Hitler had delivered his big speeches, to soak in a real sense of history and show their sensitivity to the past.
Did they, bollocks!
We filmed the last of the racist bastards giving the Hitler salute, somehow lost in a moment of National Front bigotry, summoning from history the most odious character of the modern era, and breaking contemporary German law in the process by waving swastikas and making mock Nazi salutes.
‘My granddad killed your granddad,’ they chanted melodically.
Proud to be English – they claimed, but who would be proud of that, so far from the moral high ground that we took when good old Britain entered other people’s wars. If their granddads had killed in the name of freedom, they failed to recognise that they were pissing that liberty up the wall, and trampling all over their ancestors’ graves. ‘Five German bombers in the air,’ they entertained in almost choral proportions.
Yeah right. Wankers, the lot of them, some even as young as ten – nothing but aggression and racism in their tone. Even it was just the one per cent of the fans, the figure was way too high.
Much as I loved being here, it was same shit, different day – scorching heat, get your kit on, lager it up, and follow like-minded hooligans, with sporadic scuffles the order of the day. We had arrived in Stuttgart three days early. It was clear this was where it would next kick off, and we needed to get our bearings in advance. We had filmed Ronald Kirsch undercover – an acquaintance of our old mate Annis. Organising scraps was his game.
Against Trinidad, there was no whiff of tension – the fans wouldn’t lower themselves to that against such relative no-hopers – and against Sweden, it was the ultimate wide boy porn fantasy. There was no trouble here – all the English just wanted to nail the blonde Swedish birds. Plus, there was that added notion that Sven might come good. Finally the Emperor’s New Clothes might come off and reveal the genius he’d been threatening us all with since we walloped Germany 5–1 in their own backyard all those years ago!
Alas, no. It was hard to hate him, and everyone knew he was going. In many ways he had become a bit English himself, meaning that come another England versus Sweden game, there was no point wasting any hostility. Instead, we enjoyed the sheer comedic potential of our manager singing both national anthems on the touchline, knowing that what lay ahead might be more tasty. In fact the Germany versus Poland fixture was more of an obvious flashpoint.
At the last sixteen, Stuttgart was built for the thug. The Germans had tried to lay on a big party atmosphere for the English. At one point, they had described our fans as the best in the world. Those Germans, and their sense of humour, hey? The square was as always the focal point – another hot day was looming and these huge buildings towered above the traditional magnet for England fans. I must have counted, at best, a dozen Ecuador fans. The booze was flowing from ten in the morning and the Germans were great hosts – sadly, our lads had different agendas for a party.
Predictably, the fans were burned to a crisp, shirts off and no sun tan lotion on, standing on the steps with twenty pints of lager inside them, wanting to fight the world. Apparently there was a match on. This is a snapshot of the English hooligan abroad. The Germans were out, too, even though it wasn’t their gig. It was, after all, their country, not that it felt like that.
And then it started. We were standing around chatting, Simon on the covert camera so I could pretend to get pissed, when a German girl wearing the national scarf walked past the steps and the massive Greek-style pillars where the world had gathered. The enclosed atmosphere said trouble was on the horizon. England were chanting the usual bullshit – anger in the air.
They approached the German bird and someone threw a pint pot at her, so her knight in shining armour tried to have a go back at the English lout. The next thing I knew, a load of German passers-by who had nothing to do with football didn’t so much get caught up in it as they positively joined in. Again, the weapon of mass destruction emerged – the plastic chairs were brought out ready for another night’s hurling. Caught up in the middle of this, a young Turk got punched in the face right under Simon’s covert camera. Another thug took his picture – then the English scum smashed his specs and drenched him in beer. His face was bloodied. The hooligans were cheering, spitting and pissing on the German flag.
This was a revenge attack for all the incidents when Leeds fans had been stabbed at the hands of Galatasaray, even though week in week out, all this lot hated Leeds. We were left on the steps, caught up in a cordon of German riot police.
‘We need to get out of here, mate,’ I said to Simon. ‘We’re gonna get caught up in this.’
At the back, the coppers were circling. I spotted our very own Richard Bilton and his cameraman Nick Woolley. I knew we were going to get busted. I tried to exit through the guys at the top of the square. I gave my colleagues the eye, telling them not to say anything. Their back-watcher, Bunny Coleman, could see the shit we were in – he tried to create a sideshow so we could get out but I had that sinking feeling that we had been trapped. Caught up in the filming, I had made a schoolboy error. I hadn’t been looking for an escape route. We were there to film, and had got right to the heart of it, but now the riot police stormed in, grabbing everyone regardless of guilt. I knew we were done.
As the oldest-looking guys, it also seemed to the cops that we were the ringleaders. We were fucked. They came for me first. In seconds, I had plasticuffs on me. I was dragged along the street to their van, the first to be thrown in. All around us, either in the know or working on journalistic instinct, the snappers were having a field day. The overt BBC crew were also there! To their credit, they put their gear down and didn’t shoot me being thrown in, not that it mattered. We looked like the ringleaders. I didn’t resist – just for the drama and authenticity of it all.
Inside, it was a completely sealed unit with two benched seats, one either side, and a g
rilled unit in the corner. Next came a West Brom fan, followed by a Man U thug and a Southampton piece of shit. Simon was still outside.
‘Where you from? What’s gonna happen?’ they asked me. They were giddy at their arrest, looking up to me as the leader. Inside, I was pissing myself. I was in a small amount of shit and didn’t really know how this would play out, nor if I would have to play the BBC card. But, I also knew I’d been granted access that I would have craved if it was pre-planned. My concern was that I had two spare batteries and two spare tapes on me. That was my only weakness.
Bang. The door opened. Simon was next into the van. ‘Everything OK?’ I asked.
‘Yeah yeah,’ he replied, a massive grin on his face.
‘Everything still working?’ I coded.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he nodded.
I told the other thickheads that he’d had a kick in the nuts and thankfully his meat and two veg were in order. They bought the whole thing. ‘What’s gonna happen now?’ they asked me.
‘Nothing much. They’ll take us down the nick and then let us go tomorrow morning.’ I was playing the hard man who had been nicked a thousand times before.
It must have been fifty degrees in there. We were dripping with sweat. Then the door flew open again. The next one in was still singing ‘Engerland, Engerland’ as he was thrown in. Don’t you show some humility at the moment of arrest rather than breaking into song? ‘You fucking German cunts, I’ll have you, we’ll fucking have you. We’re fucking Millwall. You’ve never fucked with Millwall,’ he put it at his most eloquent best. Who couldn’t be prouder? ‘We’ve fucking done ’em!’ he shouted
There were just six of us in the back and two belonged to the BBC! He was nineteen, both in stone and age, wearing just his shorts.
‘Yeah, I’m from West Ham and we fucking hate you, so shut the fuck up,’ I snarled at him.
Bodyguard Page 11
