The
Observer
Denmark
‘He is nine years old’ – more Danes tell of being
abused by England fans
Danish
supporters say they were verbally abused at Wembley
One fan claims
England fans spat at children
Marcus
Christenson
@m_christenson
Sat 10 Jul
2021 17.12 BST
More
Denmark fans have come forward to say they were verbally abused by England
supporters at Wembley during Wednesday’s Euro 2020 semi-final, with one parent
describing how her nine-year-old son was “booed in the face” and that she and
her husband were shouted at after the game.
Imaan
Madsen, a Danish citizen living in the UK, told the Observer that the family of
three had not experienced any problems during the game but as they left the
stadium England fans shouted “fuck Denmark” and other slurs at them.
“Our
nine-year-old son was booed directly into his face by one fan,” she said. “He
had the Danish flag painted on his face and wore a Viking hat and a Denmark
kit. We had to wipe the colour off his face and cover up his clothes to stop
the abuse. I am absolutely gutted with the behaviour of some English fans,
especially towards a child.”
On Friday
Jeanette Jørgensen told the Guardian that people had shouted “you don’t belong
here” and tried to take her Danish flag. “We had a Danish flag and they were
trying to take it away from me,” she said “but I pulled it back and said: ‘Just
leave it.’ Then they started pulling my hair as well and I couldn’t believe
what was happening. It was quite frightening.”
Allan
Nielsen told the Observer on Saturday that he saw Denmark fans being spat at
and nearby police doing nothing about it. “Overall the whole experience was
very frightening and we felt like we were walking in a war zone and that it was
just a matter of time before someone would come at us,” he said. “We saw
English fans spitting at kids.”
He said he
was surprised at the lax security at the game. “When we entered the stadium
security didn’t check the Covid app for test results. They hardly checked our
bags either. I just told them what I had in my belt bag and that was fine – no
wonder they could bring fireworks and laser pointers.”
Other fans
who contacted the Observer and the Guardian were also upset with the security
inside the stadium and the fact that England supporters managed to sit in the
Denmark sections. Birgitte Surtees went to the game with her English husband
and their Danish-English son.
“Going
through security at the stadium was very easy and my bag was not checked,” she
said. “Also we had been told beforehand to bring our passports in order to
match our tickets to our documents but nothing was checked.
“Inside the
stadium we took our seats and waited. Suddenly the seats around us started
filling up with English supporters. I heard them shout to others that there
were empty seats here and suddenly we had about 30 [England] supporters sitting
around us. There was no security around and after being shouted at we managed
to move a few seats away from the ones we felt were the most aggressive.”
Surtees
says one fan shouted in her ear how “shit Denmark was, how shit I was and that
I was a whore”. She says her main complaint is that it felt as if there was no
crowd control, no seat checking and that there were not enough police or
security personnel at the stadium. She and other fans are in the process of
making a complaint to Uefa and the Danish football federation.
Søren
Moldaschl, who travelled from Scotland for the game, says he was lucky enough
to be in a section which had an “amazing” atmosphere for almost all of the game
and only a handful of English fans. He says that other Danish sections of the
ground “were full of English fans” and that “despite being told to bring photo
ID, there was no cross-checking of that with the tickets and seats/sections”.
Uefa said
in a statement that it had “not received any complaint to date” but several
Denmark fans the Observer spoke to on Saturday said they had sent their
observations to the governing body after the game and not heard back.
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