Opinion | Shameful England ‘fans’ continue to trample all over Europe tarnishing the reputation of decent supporters

One hundred and two football fans were arrested in Amsterdam on Friday around the ‘friendly’ football match between Holland and England – the majority for “disrupting public order”. According to Dutch police, 100 of them were English. According to English police, it was the most arrests for a single game in “several years.”

Organising the tie on a Friday night in Amsterdam, whose lad-friendly attractions are cheap and easy to reach from England, was unlikely to pass without incident – and an all-too vocal minority of England fans do incidents well.

Be it abusing friendly hosts, throwing bottles at police, beer at tourists or booing their opponents’ national anthem, there are many young England supporters who, after a day of drinking, are ready to act up – and some of those fans were hanging up their flags of St George outside Amsterdam’s Old Sailor pub at 9am.

Confidence and arrogance increases when there is safety in numbers, giving rise to their canon of songs about RAF bombers shooting down German planes three quarters of a century ago, or not surrendering to the Irish Republican Army 20 years after the Good Friday peace agreement was signed in Northern Ireland.

Whether by the water in Marseille’s Vieux Port or the canals of Amsterdam’s Red Light District, Little Englanders love to stand and sing, their beer-induced air of superiority covering their inadequacies.

I watched England fans closely in their last two tournaments in Brazil and France. In Brazil, there was almost no trouble – it’s expensive to get to and was seemingly out of reach of a lot of the idiots who cause trouble at games within a budget airline or train ride from home.

In Europe, the barriers to attending are so low that they can be in Marseille or Amsterdam in a few hours, singing songs about looking forward to leaving the EU as they swill Dutch beer in their German-made trainers and £500 Italian coats.

In Amsterdam, a video went viral of tourists waving to England fans as their boat passed under a bridge. They were pelted with beer and bottles for their friendliness. A bicycle, with a child’s seat, was then thrown in the canal. Dutch media reported that Lance Roberts, a 48 year-old Briton who has spent more than half of his life living in Amsterdam and whose children go to a nearby nursery, was so embarrassed that he took a boat the following day and hooked the bike from the canal. He planned to put it back when England fans had gone home.