English Fans Called Unbearable? Fact-Checking the Claim

Thousands of football fans, many cloaked in the flag of St George, roamed the streets of central London, screaming that football was coming home, chanting and clapping on cue to the sound of a foghorn: “England!” The air was close with the ...

By the time Porto’s rush-hour commuters were bustling along the Avenida dos Aliados on Thursday morning the only evidence of the previous night’s mayhem was the faint whiff of cheap lager. Every shard of every broken bottle hurled by England fans had been swept up.

Dozens of people were injured. During the 1970s, black footballers became an increasingly frequent presence in English football, mostly born to Afro-Caribbean immigrants who settled in Britain from 1948. With racial tension high in many parts of Britain and the far-right National Front peaking in popularity at the same time, many of these players were subjected to regular racial abuse from fans of rival teams, whose fans often pelted them with banana skins, as well as making monkey chants or shouting racist obscenities.

A 2019 Euro qualifying match between Bulgaria and England was suspended twice to remove fans that had been taunting black English players. Raheem Sterling said that he had heard masked groups making monkey sounds and performing Nazi salutes ...

Beneath — only just beneath — the sponsorship and philanthropy and dazzle of the modern game, these lads are there watching England blow it. ... The English are earthbound, pedantic, stubborn, loud, wooden, and superstitious.

English Football Fans are the third-most-feared group of people in the known universe (behind the SAS and Scottish football fans), and the most deluded. Living on a diet of alcohol, Pukka Pies and embarrassment, this distinguished group has ...

A particular brand of chaos follows the England national team abroad, chaos that would rarely - if ever - be seen at club level

Football fans are said to be the lifeblood of any football club. And while that may be becoming less and less the case as top-level football continues to morph into more of a business than a sport, supporters are not willing to give up what they believe is their right to voice their opinions about their teams — for better or for worse. Poor performances, questionable management, ownership issues and other factors often spark debates among fans that can sometimes spiral out of control.

It strikes me that the reputation of the average England fan has been coloured by a lingering establishment distaste for football supporters as a whole. English people consuming English coverage of English fans with all of the attendant national shame. Presumably there is similar outrage in the Netherlands at the supporters who wore blackface in Ruud Gullit fancy dress or in Serbia for fans filmed singing in support of Vladimir Putin?