Football's coming home in an overcrowded train, an overwhelmed tram system and an overpriced cab.
The grounds are great, the football good, but getting to games is a nightmare for many fans.
Fans risk getting hurt here in Germany. Whether in an over-crowded station, suffering a panic attack, falling off a platform, or squeezed against a wall, heading down a cramped tunnel towards a ground, even, as has happened, when walking along the tracks between abandoned train and wall. Organisers need to listen to fans’ groups before it’s too late.
Everyone’s targeting Uefa but the area it controls, the stadium and immediate footprint, tend to be well-organised. It was getting to and from Arena AufSchalke in (well near) Gelsenkirchen on Sunday that was the nightmare: delays, cancellations, over-crowding and poor communication. Some England fans reported arriving back in Bochum four hours after the final whistle, a distance of scarcely 10 miles. Others heading to Bochum abandoned the Deutsche Bahn and tram system and got a taxi, €180 for a €40 trip. Cabs made an absolute killing.
Another fan, CJ Joiner, a veteran of England at tournaments, claimed of the German organisers, “They couldn’t run a bath round here let alone a major event like this.” Joiner endured the chaos getting in and out of the Arena. “Uefa should take the whole thing off the Germans and do it all themselves. Ground footprint (Uefa’s bit) is bang on. Everywhere else is atrocious. Transport's dreadful."
This is the chronicle of a fear foretold. All parties were warned by the Football Supporters’ Association, as well as the FA and UK Police, of the 35,000+ England fans attending the game against Serbia and enquiring whether the transport system would cope. The FSA foresaw where the problems lay, in the struggling DB system, and the inevitability of so many England fans needing to go via Gelsenkirchen Hauptbahnhof to reach the Arena. They even negotiated with the German authorities for the loos at the station to be opened for free, rather than the €1.
It was DB taking the p*ss. What the FSA feared transpired on Sunday, including what the fans’ body described, following feedback from supporters, as “dangerous levels of overcrowding,” “negligent crowd management”, “lack of signage, lighting and volunteers guiding fans outside the stadium to local transport options” and “a complete disregard for those with accessibility needs”.