English and Russian fans clash in France

They weren’t afraid and they wanted to fight with English fans.

England and Russian Federation fans rioted before the game at Marseille’s nearby Old Port district and briefly outside the Stade Velodrome in a third straight day of violence. A police source said the man had been beaten with an iron bar “apparently around the head” and was rushed to hospital after emergency first-aid at the scene.

English and Russian soccer fans hurling bottles and chairs clashed with each other and with French riot police in Marseille on Saturday ahead of their teams’ opening Euro 2016 match. There were no plans to close a beach-side fan zone, he said. It’s reported that a group of between 20-30 French teenagers attacked opposing fans with firecrackers and bottles as they congregated outside bars to watch the game, but this has not been corroborated.

He said he had witnessed bloodied England fans being “dragged away by police”, to the sound of sirens blaring out across the city’s main square.

Fans are in the southern port city ahead of England’s game against Russian Federation at the Stade Velodrome, which kicks off at 20:00 BST.

However, what happened during the match will be overshadowed by the fan violence before and after.

In a series of tweets, Labour’s Mr Burnham said when the terror threat in France was taken into account, it made the “behaviour of these England “fans” even more embarrassing”.

Though there has been a substantial element of provocation behind the violence in Marseille’s old port, some English conduct has been an embarrassment and shown the absence of any kind of self-policing among groups.

He told the Press Association: “We were in the Old Port town and the Russian ultras ganged up with the Marseilles ultras and attacked the English supporters that were sitting there drinking beers”.

“The first option at the moment seems to be that the French police are going to put tear gas in the areas where there are potentially going to be problems”.

The police have been clashing with fans for three days now, and things are clearly getting out of control.

This was outside a pub in the same area that had been affected on Thursday by trouble which had continued well into the early hours of Friday.

At least one British fan was seriously injured in the clashes.