Marseille (AFP) - The Pizzeria du Sud was selling record amounts of beer to England fans when a group of Russians in near-military formation burst into a square near the Marseille seafront. The beatings, broken bottles, tear gas, court cases and diplomatic shouting that followed came as a stark warning ahead of Russia's third Euro 2016 match on Monday against Wales.
French authorities have declared the game in Toulouse at high risk of hooligan trouble. Marseille meanwhile has still not recovered from its battle with the thugs.
Karim Ledun, was waiting tables at the pizzeria on June 11 when the Russian fans targeted English fans in what prosecutors called an orchestrated "hunt". "To start with there were just English fans in the square," said Ledun, 24, who was working at the restaurant in the Vieux Port area.
French prosecutors say they could still launch an attempted murder investigation over the iron-bar attack and another on an English man who also remains in serious condition. English football authorities had warned for months about the potentially explosive combination of a summer's day on France's south coast, given both countries' reputation for football hooliganism.
To cheers and applause at a Saint Petersburg conference, President Vladimir Putin said Friday: "I truly don't understand how 200 of our fans could beat up several thousand English." Putin's spokesman on Sunday scoffed at a British newspaper report that the British government believes the Kremlin was behind the violence in France.
The trouble at Euro 2016 has raised concerns about Russia's hosting of the 2018 World Cup however. The tournament is a prestige project for Putin, however, and John Williams, a senior lecturer in sociology at Leicester University in England, predicted Russian authorities would "come down very hard at home on domestic hooligans, both before and, if necessary, during the finals."
