The Final: Attack on Wembley

Firstly i'm not a football fan, i stopped supporting football about 35 years ago when it became more about the money and politics rather than the so called beautiful game.

However i do have an interest in Football hooliganism ( call it macabre ) but my view is if someone was a true fan of football why would they become a raving loon involving 22 grown men kicking a piece of leather up and down a grass filed in there underwear.

What got me was the way the producers made the ' hooligans ' out to be the good guys and the security and Wembley staff out to be the bad guys, and the guy with the neck tattoo who claimed he did it because he's been climbing the walls at home through the Covid lockdown was about as thick as the interviewer who asked him the question.

Personally the so called football fans who were interviewed and seen causing damage should have been bought up on charges and banned from games.

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.

This documentary made me sick and things like this is why I can never support England even though I've lived here all my life.

The glorifying of England thugs in this made me sick yo my stomach, the filmmakers have no clue and should give up making this dirge for netflix money immediately.

Don't watch this if you're proud of being English. It will make you sick and we should never host another tournament ever again.

Why have finals this late in the day when everyone does nothing but drink all day. I am soooooioio glad England lost, Italy were the better team anyway. These fans broke in and robbed people of their rights to watch the game.

A mildly compelling but disturbing watch, proving English hooliganism hasn't really moved on that much since the 70's & 80's.

The actual football story aside (which was the only decent thing in this doc - well done lads!) this documentary missed a real opportunity to educate the public on football crowd dynamics, and what another shameful episode the psychy at English football grounds is sometimes still really like., especially when groups of young people are a several beers deep so long before the game.

The doc completely failed to go into the additional experience of a number of player's families and dignitaries that fell foul of the mob developing outside, nor some corrupt event hosts/guards that took cash bribes from ticket-less fans to ease their passage through, and also the fans with genuine tickets (including in disabled areas) who were threatened with violence for simply attempting to access their assigned seat once reaching their zone, with zero help from stadium stewards frozen to do anything about it.

The planned Covid spacing protocols went down the toilet, thugs just sat/stood wherever they pleased, taking other fans seats, overcrowding behind the goals especially, and over the access ways that were meant to be kept clear in the event of rapid evacuation etc. The list goes on.

Security was a complete shambles - remember, it was just less than 6 yrs earlier, in 2015, that a coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris took place, one of which was at the national 'Stade de France' Stadium as 3 suicide bombers attempted to gain access to a France vs Germany football game to no avail, ultimately detonating themselves outside instead. Imagine the carnage had something of this scale developed at Wembley?

I did not see any news of reprimands in the press following this shameful Wembley fiasco over their security and organisational shambles that could've turned out very differently. It was purely by fluke that no one died that day.

• It's no surprise to me that the English FA and Wembley Stadium authorities were total unprepared for the scale of chaos that ensured in England's long wait for final appearance in a major tournament.

• It's also no surprise to me that the 2 young men (and I use the term 'men' loosely) who effectively stole other people's money to gain access to the stadium, feel no shame in their behavior, such is the vast blatant disrespect for authority and that appears to exist in this age group. There simply aren't sufficient consequences for this kind of immature, childish behavior.

• And should it really be any surprise that the English FA and Wembley Stadium authorities have no shame in monetizing their failures if they can make a few bucks out of Netflix? Not really.

Disappointing lacking in accountability throughout.

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.