2017 - 2024 Tab Media babe •
How to not be a dickhead at the Euros
Don’t throw any chairs
Football is our nation’s favourite sport. In football grounds up and down the country you will find every walk of life. In every theatre of dreams, a different character playing their role.
This week they go abroad. To France, to the Euros, to almost certain disappointment.
But our game is full of dickheads. Dickheads doing dickhead-y things. Here is our guide on how you can avoid being a dickhead at the Euros.
Don’t play furniture tennis
What is it about following England away that turns usually perfectly respectable people into chair-throwing children?
Generally speaking, you should not hit people. You definitely should not hit people at football matches. You absolutely definitely totally should not throw chairs at people at football matches.
It always happens at European club matches. The streets of Liverpool, Manchester, Barcelona and Basel will be littered with angry men throwing plastic furniture at each other whilst business owners hopelessly watch on. Only ever done by dickheads. Stop it.
Don’t draw pub graffiti
Most public toilets are covered in bizarre, sexualised graffiti. You’ll find phone numbers neatly inscribed onto a toilet door, or just “LAGER” plastered across the walls.
But you can always tell when football fans have been expressing their creative side. Expect “FUCK THE IRA” or “WE WON THE WAR” in pub toilets across the continent. The IRA don’t care about Rotherham United. Drunken teenage fans of Brentford FC wearing stone island jumpers did not win the Second World War. Stop doing this.
Don’t join The England Band
https://twitter.com/Billie_T/status/738444388372729857
Leave everyone alone
(see also: furniture tennis)
Things got a bit silly during England’s last away international outing. Fans disrupted Berlin’s tram system by throwing plants (WHY) on the tracks and passed the time by opening random car doors and chucking beer inside. Some fans even ripped off bicycle wheels just to throw them around. This is the peak of the dickhead standard. Do not do this.
The police are often heavy-handed with football fans. Strict laws on drinking, singing and travelling have been a nuisance to us, but doing stupid shit like this doesn’t help our cause at all.
Don’t be the Topless Man
There aren’t many sights more disturbing than the sudden mass-exposure of pale skin at the start of an English summer. But at football, it only gets worse.
Generally speaking, getting naked in public is a bad thing to do. Getting naked in public because the football team you support has scored a football goal is a thing only dickheads do.
Don’t place a stupid bet and spend the whole day complaining when it doesn’t come in
Think about for a second, is that obscure defensive midfielder actually going to score the first goal, or are the bookies going to be accepting a £10 donation? The latter is almost always true.
Whatever madness happens in football, there’s always one person with £10 on it. But it’s not going to be you. Spend it on beer instead.
Don’t goad international terrorist organisations
Don’t be a Crusader
A group of top-gear-watching dads wearing £10 crusader outfits from Argos is a guaranteed sight at every England match. Instead of dressing in his usual jeans and sheuxsss, Your Dad is embracing the arena of international football wearing his finest 11th Century clobber.
Pope Urban II did not license this. It’s England V Russia in Marseille, not the siege of Antioch.
Other forms of deeply questionable fancy dress include: wearing masks of England players, disturbingly excessive face paint (or any face paint at all), and ‘fatsuits’.
Don’t hit a horse
Police horses are often deployed around football grounds in order to suppress the tension between opposing fans. They are glorious beasts. Don’t hit them.
https://twitter.com/SingleMaltSuds/status/734050698061619200
Don’t set off smoke bombs or flares outside of a quiet pub
You’ll look like a tit.
Don’t stand in a circle throwing things at the floor
You are an adult. You should not be throwing empty crates and beer bottles into the road.