Yzabelle Bostyn
SPANIARDS are outraged after British football fans destroyed terraces, ripped down traffic lights and urinated in the street while celebrating the Europa League final.
Tottenham Hotspur beat Manchester United 1-0 yesterday, earning them a spot in the Champion’s League.
While Spurs fans were ecstatic at the win, the club’s first European trophy in over four decades, locals were less than happy with footie fans’ behaviour.
Before the game had even started, supporters were spotted ripping down traffic lights in the city centre.
“The worst thing about this is that the Europa League doesn’t pay any taxes,” said one commenter.
“Then, the local citizens will have to pay to repair this damage from our taxes. UEFA is a mafia.”
Other X (formerly Twitter) users agreed: “If they did this for anything else other than football, our jails would be full. Football seems to give a free pass to almost any behaviour,” one said.
“In Benidorm they have to put up with this all year, alcoholic lowlives,” another chimed in.
Meanwhile, locals in Bilbao’s main square made their annoyance known by filing long sticks and poking anyone who tried to scale their balconies.
READ MORE: WATCH: Thousands of English football fans live it up in Bilbao for the Europa League final
“You can’t just throw boiling oil on them nowadays can you?” one X user asked.
Meanwhile another mused: “Well, they are Brits on a balcony, that man may have saved their lives.”
“I will never understand how Britain was once the world’s biggest power, bearing in mind the amount of idiots they seem to have among them,” quipped @YemiEgg.
Many Brits agreed with their Spanish counterparts, saying ‘good for him, who wants Manchester yobs outside their front door?’
But that wasn’t the worst of it as videos surfaced on social media of a completely naked fan scaling scaffolding and showing off his ‘manhood’.
“I’m not a puritan but this is bad for the city, I don’t see anything positive about welcoming this drunken pack,” said one user.
“This is an honour for the Brits…I feel bad for the Bilbao locals who have to put up with these selfish idiots,” another added.
Spaniards were also shocked to see Spurs and Man Utd fans fighting.
One video, which has been shown on various Spanish news networks, showed Brits punching and throwing bar tables at each other in San Sebastian.
READ MORE: PARTY LIKE IT’S 2008: Tottenham vow to ‘take revenge’ for Bilbao in Euro final tonight
British users called it ‘embarrassing’, saying the fans ‘had no idea about the reputational damage they were doing to England and the English.’
In another, two Manchester United fans traverse through a crowd of Spurs supporters as they are pelted with beer and other rubbish.
Other Brits called the behaviour ‘f**cking disgusting’, saying the fans ‘should be ashamed.’
The event has also highlighted other issues for the city, including the rise in AirBnB pushing up rent prices for locals.
PHOTO: @sosaldezaharra
Attendees also complained that the city’s infrastructure was not well-equipped to deal with an international football event, with many fans left sleeping in the bus station.
However, not all football fans behave the same way and many videos also surfaced of them singing in the street, peacefully enjoying the fan zone and using the city’s many tourist services.
A video shared by Spanish news outlet, El Confidencial showed fans cheering on cars as they passed in the street.
Despite the outrage, local police were ‘pleased’ with the event, arresting just six people and recording ‘few’ incidents.
Olive Press readers also shared they had been on the same flight as some fans and called them ‘perfectly behaved.’
Overall, some 50,000 people attended the match, providing a boost to Bilbao’s economy. But many locals wonder- is it worth the risk?
READ MORE: An architect’s eye of Bilbao – ‘Spain’s industrial capital is much more than just the Guggenheim’
Much of this article is contrary to your own journalist’s account, in which it is reported that even the city’s mayor was happy with the outcome. A few bad apples…..
What is also interesting is the completely different views on the state of preparation by the authorities in Bilbao. UEFA were glowing in their report, which included direct reference to transportation, while that was clearly not the state – confirmed to me by a fan who had attended the event.
Hi Mark
Totally correct – very few bad apples – and the facts are actually in the city of Bilbao there was nearly no trouble and the real fans who got there shared banter and drinks and didn’t swap punches… The eight arrests proves that.
In terms of the organization, I spoke to a friend of the mayor, who I did criticize in my article, but apparently they had contracted extra buses and taxis from other regions in attempts to avoid the problems they had from midnight to 7 AM.
Everything else worked well apart from the key issue of getting home after the game, which was obviously pretty quick if you were Manchester and later, if you were Spurs.
Perhaps fining taxi drivers who picked people up at random corners instead of the official taxi ranks might have saved many hours for a lot of unlucky fans who got soaked in the rain waiting to get home.
And next time contracting 500 more drivers!
Oh and running trains and night buses through the night !!!!
English hooligans!!!