PARIS, FRANCE. In a move that has shocked precisely no one who has ever tried to order a pint in Lyon, the French authorities have declared open season on British football supporters, arresting hundreds in a crackdown that makes the 2005 Champions League final look like a picnic. The charges? Being British. Being loud. Having the audacity to enjoy a football match without a baguette in one hand and a Gauloises in the other.
The scenes, your correspondent is told, were Dickensian in their absurdity. Riot police, resplendent in their paramilitary chic, descended upon the streets of Paris like a plague of angry wasps. Fans were kettled, kettled again, and then kettled for good measure, their only crime being that they dared to sing songs about a man from Benidorm. One witness, a man named Nigel from Stoke-on-Trent, described the experience as “like being in a washing machine filled with tear gas and bad attitudes.”
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, a man whose face looks like it was drawn from memory by someone who had only glimpsed a human once, justified the heavy-handed tactics in a statement that translated roughly to: “We must protect French culture from the scourge of cheap lager and inadequate dental hygiene.” The real reason, of course, is that the French cannot bear the thought of anyone having fun within their borders. It upsets the delicate balance of existential despair that powers their national identity.
But let us not be too hasty to judge. Perhaps the French are right to be afraid. British football fans, after all, are a terrifying force of nature. They travel in packs, consume alcohol in quantities that would fell a horse, and have an uncanny ability to find the most expensive place to buy a round. They are, in many ways, the human equivalent of a riot in a china shop. Only the china is your wallet, and the riot is a group of men in replica shirts arguing about the offside rule.
The irony, of course, is that the British government, ever the loyal dog to the French master, has said nothing. The Foreign Office, in a statement that was as predictable as it was useless, advised fans to “cooperate with local authorities” and “avoid wearing replica shirts in public areas.” In other words: be ashamed of being British at a football match. The same government that sends fans to Qatar with their heads held high now tells them to cower in fear of the French police. It is a disgrace, but then what isn’t these days?
And so, as the sun sets on another day of Franco-British discord, your correspondent sits in a bar somewhere in the 11th arrondissement, sipping a glass of wine that tastes like regret and smelling faintly of pepper spray. The fans will go home. The arrests will be forgotten. But the absurdity of it all will linger, like a stale Croissant in the fridge of memory. Vive la France. God save the King. And for heaven’s sake, keep your head down.
