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The Final: Attack on Wembley (2024)

Why didn’t CONMEBOL watch ‘The Final: Attack on Wembley’ (2024)

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by

MJ-A
in

The 2024 Euros were played this past month in Germany. For the second time in a row, England failed to win the Final, but at least the tournament ran fairly smoothly. It was just 3 years since the last Final, but if you’ve forgotten what happened at the 2021 edition of Euro Sunday, then let Netflix refresh your memory with the outstanding documentary, The Final: Attack on Wembley.

Co-directors Robert Miller and Kwabena Oppong weave together individual stories, photos, and videos of fans and officials throughout a day of celebration that turned into a violent, drunken cataclysm. The game of England vs Italy is mere background in a security horror story of ticketless fans invading a stadium on the pandemic’s Freedom Day, Sunday Jul-11-2021.

What makes this film even more important is that the whole situation was practically repeated at the 2024 Copa America Final at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on Jul-14-2024. You have to wonder why CONMEBOL security officials did not use a Netflix subscription to watch this film. Certainly it should be watched by everyone in charge of WC 2026 logistics. The film is only 82 minutes long and should be in every stadium director’s handbook. 😀

A Synopsis

The first 15 minutes of the film cover the buildup to the game: success under Manager Gareth Southgate, England’s hopes of bringing home the first trophy since WC 1966, and why fans were so willing to pay huge sums to go to a once-in-a-lifetime game. Because this was the first year of COVID, Premier League games hadn’t had fans, and for the Final, the stadium was only allowed to be at 2/3 capacity. People had been cooped up in their homes for months, and the Final was the nation’s first chance for crowds to gather in celebration. Social distancing restrictions had been lifted.

Dan of Shropshire didn’t have a ticket but resolved he would go to Wembley with thousands in cash, because he had to get in and see this game. Ticketless fan Max went to Wembley just to join the celebration and get F’d up.

The next 30 minutes of the film show the growing chaos on Olympic Way. Ticketless fans started arriving in the morning. Bottles and cans were being thrown in the air; broken glass, drug use, and trash were everywhere.

According to Baroness Casey’s Dec-2021 report, by afternoon 3,000 people were arriving every 15 minutes at Wembley Park Underground station, and the game still had 5 hours until kickoff. Because of COVID, there was only 1 fan zone for 1,500 people downtown. So Olympic Way turned into a massive tailgate. People brought their own alcohol, leaving behind 31 tonnes of rubbish, 10 times the normal amount.

On the opposite side, the film simulates the control room personnel watching the growing crowd. The police had only been scheduled to appear at 3:00 PM, because situations had been expected to occur downtown. The police showed up a little early, but by then Olympic Way was jam-packed and ticketless fans were on the stadium’s doorstep.

First-time security guard Taz realized they were seriously outnumbered.

Fans with tickets faced a gauntlet to get to the stadium. Italian fan Gianluca Santoro brought his 10 year old daughter Maya but they were harassed. Finally, they joined in with a group of Italians who were escorted through the chaos.

Daily Mail Sports Correspondent Mike Keegan took his 70 year old father-in-law to the game. A ticketless fan tried to tailgate inbetween them. Keegan complains there was not enough security and too many ticketless fans. He wrote an article about his experience here.

Over the next 15 minutes, the film shows how ticketless fans breached security. They knocked down fences, then pushed and punched their way in. Security tried locking down turnstiles, but this created potentially crushing situations, so they had to reopen. Once the game began, security had to accept that the ticketless fans had won, and the next big problem was to deal with the 6,000 fans outside the stadium who would try to breach if England won the game.

The next 20 minutes covers the game and the racist abuse that followed. When the Final went to a shootout, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka failed to make their penalties. It started to rain, and with England’s loss, the security threat finally dissolved away. But the 3 Black players as well as many people of color were then subjected to online racist abuse.

In the aftermath, the film shows the community rising to support the players and heal the defacement of Rashford’s mural.

The Aftermath

The film doesn’t mention it, but the England FA commissioned Baroness Casey to conduct an independent review on what went wrong. In all, there were 553 police officers at the stadium, of which 19 were injured. Volunteers had left for safety reasons. The stadium had booked 1,936 stewards for a capacity of 67,000, but only about 10% were experienced and many were teenagers.

About 100,000 people traveled to Wembley that day. Security suffered 17 massive breaches. 2,000 ticketless fans gained entry to the stadium, often targeting disabled pass gates and Emergency exits. 400 tailgaters were ejected.

There had been no clear accountability and financial responsibility for public safety in Zone Ex, the public space outside the stadium, i.e. Olympic Way. This essentially became an unlicensed fan zone. The lack of fan zones made ticketless fans more eager to enter the stadium, because they had no way to watch the game.

It was extremely fortunate that no one died.

Dan of Shropshire has no remorse.

In Conclusion

I had trouble watching this documentary, because in many ways it felt like a horror or a hooligan film. I hadn’t seen any of these videos and I dreaded watching what might come next. But one good aspect of this film is that it doesn’t have a lot of talking heads and journalists. Almost all the interviewees are people who were there and experienced the chaos. This film does a great job conveying and recreating the horror as this massive event went wrong.

But underneath, to me the real horror is that people would do anything to be entertained. 200 years ago, these young Englishmen were going into battle, or to war, or to sea. Instead, today they are assaulting people in order to watch a game. It’s a horrific image of today’s society.

9 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 9

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