The Final: Attack on Wembley

I was under no illusions that this was going to be a frustrating watch. What happened on that day was a feeling of disappointment for the end result, coupled with anger, embarrassment and shame with off field antics. This documentary brought those feeling back again.

It covers the entire build up of the day of the final. It looks to understand what and how it happened, and allows some of those involved to give their personal stories and ridiculous justifications for what was, and still is, unacceptable anti-social behaviour.

As an England football fan, the rollercoaster of anger and shame while watching it all continued to unfold. In listening to the modern day Neanderthals think their actions were perfectly okay and just driven by passion and a release of frustration post lockdown was just alien to me.

It's reasonably well produced, but difficult if you're English with any sense of morality. It will be a constant reminder why people will be very nervous that England co-host the euros in 2028 or at least why the security is bound to be significant.

This documentary chronicles the Euro Cup football title match between Italy and England at London's Wembley Stadium in 2021. The London police and stadium officials should have watched a documentary about the 2011 riot in Vancouver after their hockey team lost a Stanley Cup final game. Like Vancouver, the English authorities were totally unprepared, despite the English history of hooliganism, for what occurred before the match: huge crowds of mostly drunken young men gathered for blocks outside the stadium hours before the match starting time. Outnumbered authorities had no choice but to let the hooligans swarm in and watch the game, while terrorizing fans with tickets.

The documentary, like the IMDB trailer, gives way too much screen time to a neck-tattooed twit named Dan, who broke in with the mob and offers no regrets for what he did. Time is also wasted on an unrepentant young drunk who was filmed dancing on top of a bus. Apparently, neither hooligan was arrested. The end of the documentary states that 86 people were arrested, but no follow-up on their cases is offered. In contrast, the Vancouver riot documentary focused heavily on the outing of rioters on social media, and their prosecution.

The documentary loses focus when it shifts to racial insults against black players on the losing English side. A separate documentary on English racism would have made more sense. No hard questions (like why were you unprepared?) were asked of stadium officials and the police. No interviews with London and National political leaders, or soccer federation officials, were conducted. The documentary supplies plenty of information but lacks a coherent focus and is often wrongly focused.

Overall well executed doc with some glaring omissions and missed opportunities. It seems to somehow idealize and normalize English hooligan culture. There's an odd hands off, no judgement here, attitude that pervades the 90 minutes of this documentary. The authors seem to have completely forgotten that in 1985 all English soccer clubs had been banned to play in European competitions for 5 years following the Heysel tragedy, where 37 Italians died following the actions of Liverpool hooligans during the Juventus Italy, Liverpool match. So again, Italy, England, hooligans. Fortunately this time, fate had that England lost the game otherwise there could have been another tragedy. All this escaped the authors and a pervasive moral relativism tells us that there's really no difference between the Italian dad going to the stadium with his daughter and regular tickets and the lovely fella jumping on the bus and getting into the stadium by braking down the barricades and evading the police. They are both fans that love soccer after all .

Whether one is a football fan, or not the behaviour portrayed in this documentary should shock you, it should make you ashamed to be English, it should make you ashamed to be a football fan. Instead by totally ignoring the consequences, by not asking the people interviewed pertinent questions regarding their behaviour what this doc ends up doing is normalising violent horrible behaviour.

See it is OK to drink too much and riot as long as football is involved, there is no morality just ignorance. This documentary confirms what many of us know already, that football is followed by a lot of ignorant men driven by the fear the will ose the respect of their peers if the don't behave like they do in this documentary.

View it as a warning.

I'm embarrassed to be English after watching this. I lost interest in football a long time ago, but felt compelled to watch this and what I found was embarrassment. This my nation denigrating in to feral barbarism in the name of sport. A couple of the people that were giving their accounts of their day out were simply morons. One, who described is moment of dancing on top of a moving bus as, "I felt like a King up there" ; just left me shaking my head and rolling my eyes. I kind of felt sorry for him in a way. Another, felt so proud of himself to have barged his way into the stadium without paying. Congratulations mate, everyone knows your face now.

A compelling watch for all the wrong reasons.