I would venture that 99% of England supporters that are in France at the moment are decent, law abiding football fans who are there to take in the atmosphere and have a good time. Of course you will always get a few idiots who, when drunk, get a little over excited and start baiting the police/locals/other fans to get a reaction and the French Gendarmerie are all too happy to oblige. What happened last night is more likely to be closer to that scenario.
There are of course the hard core hooligans who seem to have slipped through the net and they should be rounded up, locked up in a nice French prison for a while, slapped with banning orders and have their passports confiscated so that they cannot travel anywhere near a football tournament ever again. Because of these neanderthals, all England fans are being tarred with the same reputation which the local thugs and the Russian thugs take pleasure in exploiting, caring little that ordinary, decent people are caught in the cross fire. It's a worrying development and one the authorities should come down hard on.
We have a reputation so any foreign thugs looking for a fight seek us out. There is an element of that.
We have a drinking culture and 'bull dog' attitude that is embarrassing and that extends beyond football (witness any sunny day in Benidorm, Magaluf etc for evidence of it) but is at its worst at football.
Unfortunately we do also have our share of s***bags who go looking for bother and sometimes in a very deliberate and organised way, and I am afraid that is on the rise again. There is clearly no excuse for them and their behaviour.
I heard a bloke on the radio the other day saying that if someone comes looking for trouble they can always have it, and it is us versus them, blah blah blah. I can also say with absolute certainty that there are van loads of 'geezers' from this area alone who weren't planning to go to Lille but who organised themselves at short notice to go without tickets in recent days just to join in.
How to stop the fighting at tournaments is one thing. How as a society we change our culture is another. Change the latter and you may solve the former, but it is far easier said than done.
Yes there are problems but many of them start at home.
When the "minority" are caught nothing really happens. Not many reach court and when they do the punishments are lenient.
I understand the problems about punishing the innocent, but surely the penalties have to get bigger to deter the guilty.
As an interim position keep England in the tournaments but have a ticket ban for England games abroad, yes it will stop genuine fans from going but at least they can still see the team play on TV.