England supporters’ group calls for urgent review after fans left stranded

The official England supporters’ group has called for an “urgent and thorough review” of the arrangements that led to thousands of fans being stranded before and after the fixture against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday night.

The Free Lions group described fans being crammed on to trams, forced to walk for miles and stranded in the city some three hours after the final whistle. It said it was “dismayed” and called on Uefa to guarantee sufficient transport arrangements to prevent similar incidents from happening again.

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“To see fans stranded in Gelsenkirchen Hauptbahnhof [main train station] three hours after the game has finished due to transport problems at a major tournament is quite simply ridiculous,” the group said in a statement.

“Ahead of the tournament we made it clear to Uefa and the authorities that many, many thousands of England fans would be travelling to Gelsenkirchen from the outer towns and cities in North Rhine-Westphalia and that transport back to Gelsenkirchen Hauptbahnhof from Arena AufSchalke had to be the biggest priority.

“If Uefa are going to allocate a 9pm kick-off slot on a Sunday evening to any venue then they need to guarantee that transport arrangements are in place that allow all fans, including those going to fan zones, to travel safely, comfortably and conveniently both to, and crucially back from the venue.”

The Group C contest was the only match from the opening round of fixtures designated as “high risk” by Uefa, with a heightened police presence around the city and low-alcohol beer for sale in the stadium. Despite the chaos experienced by a substantial proportion of fans, there was no disorder, with police arrests limited to one England fan and seven Serbs who were detained earlier in the afternoon.

“It is remarkable that, despite facing the consequences of such inadequate provision and negligent crowd management, the thousands of England fans present remained overwhelmingly calm, restrained and compliant, thus helping to avoid more serious consequences,” Free Lions said.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Gelsenkirchen officials defended the setup. “At such a big event, of course it isn’t possible to get everyone to where they want to go in the shortest time,” the city official Ludger Wolterhoff said. “I think we must reflect on whether we could still accelerate something, but I will say very clearly that … we took a look every 15 minutes at the situation with people leaving and reacted.”

Wolterhoff said the prospects of improving transport arrangements for future matches, including a last-16 tie for the winners of England’s group, were low. “I don’t think you will be able to significantly further accelerate such a departure situation structurally,” he said.

Uefa delegates the logistical operations of its tournaments to the hosts, but is under pressure to act after Gelsenkirchen became the latest city to experience chaos at a flagship Uefa fixture. The problems follow incidents at the European Championship final at Wembley in 2021, and the Champions League finals in Paris and Istanbul in 2022 and 2023 respectively. Uefa has been approached for comment.