The Final: Attack on Wembley

Whether one is a football fan, or not the behaviour portrayed in this documentary should shock you, it should make you ashamed to be English, it should make you ashamed to be a football fan. Instead by totally ignoring the consequences, by not asking the people interviewed pertinent questions regarding their behaviour what this doc ends up doing is normalising violent horrible behaviour.

See it is OK to drink too much and riot as long as football is involved, there is no morality just ignorance. This documentary confirms what many of us know already, that football is followed by a lot of ignorant men driven by the fear the will ose the respect of their peers if the don't behave like they do in this documentary.

View it as a warning.

As "The Final: Attack on Wembley" (2024 release from the UK; 82 min.) it is "11th July 2021", and England is set to play in and host the final of the 2020 Euros (delayed by a year due to COVID) against Italy. The movie starts at 8 am (12 hours before kickoff), and people from all over England are descending upon London, already heavily drinking, and many without tickets for the game. What could go wrong? At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this movie brings a chilling account of the events on July 11, 2021, leading up to the game. A number of factors were heavily at play: first, this was England's fist chance since 1966 to win a major trophy; second, as in 1966, they would also be hosting the event; third, due to COVID delaying the tournament by a year, this was the first time people would be out and celebrating en masse; and last but not least: the English authorities vastly underestimated what was about to transpire. In short: all elements were in place for a massive for a colossal breakdown of security. The footage makes for absolute compelling if revolting viewing. I cannot readily recall having seen anything like this. The movie makers keep a tight pace throughout, and this documentary just flew by in no time.

"The Final" Attack On Wembley" started streaming on Netflix this weekend. Whether or not you are a soccer fan is frankly irrelevant. This is a documentary that shows what happens when an entire country is frenzied, with thousands of people determined to get into Wembley stadium, ticker or no ticket. SHOCKINGLY (not), pure mayhem and chaos ensues... Highly recommended.

A mildly compelling but disturbing watch, proving English hooliganism hasn't really moved on that much since the 70's & 80's.

The actual football story aside (which was the only decent thing in this doc - well done lads!) this documentary missed a real opportunity to educate the public on football crowd dynamics, and what another shameful episode the psychy at English football grounds is sometimes still really like., especially when groups of young people are a several beers deep so long before the game.

The doc completely failed to go into the additional experience of a number of player's families and dignitaries that fell foul of the mob developing outside, nor some corrupt event hosts/guards that took cash bribes from ticket-less fans to ease their passage through, and also the fans with genuine tickets (including in disabled areas) who were threatened with violence for simply attempting to access their assigned seat once reaching their zone, with zero help from stadium stewards frozen to do anything about it.

The planned Covid spacing protocols went down the toilet, thugs just sat/stood wherever they pleased, taking other fans seats, overcrowding behind the goals especially, and over the access ways that were meant to be kept clear in the event of rapid evacuation etc. The list goes on.

Security was a complete shambles - remember, it was just less than 6 yrs earlier, in 2015, that a coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris took place, one of which was at the national 'Stade de France' Stadium as 3 suicide bombers attempted to gain access to a France vs Germany football game to no avail, ultimately detonating themselves outside instead. Imagine the carnage had something of this scale developed at Wembley?

I did not see any news of reprimands in the press following this shameful Wembley fiasco over their security and organisational shambles that could've turned out very differently. It was purely by fluke that no one died that day.

• It's no surprise to me that the English FA and Wembley Stadium authorities were total unprepared for the scale of chaos that ensured in England's long wait for final appearance in a major tournament.

• It's also no surprise to me that the 2 young men (and I use the term 'men' loosely) who effectively stole other people's money to gain access to the stadium, feel no shame in their behavior, such is the vast blatant disrespect for authority and that appears to exist in this age group. There simply aren't sufficient consequences for this kind of immature, childish behavior.

• And should it really be any surprise that the English FA and Wembley Stadium authorities have no shame in monetizing their failures if they can make a few bucks out of Netflix? Not really.

Disappointing lacking in accountability throughout.

The English Hooligans are well represented and how can they not be? This documentary clearly shows how the behavior is deeply entrenched in the young male England football fan. They have a well deserved bad reputation and this documentary only solidifies that fact. Every single citizen of the country or fan of the team should be thoroughly and completely embarrassed by what happened at Wembley on this day. It's so sickening that despite my previous support of the England club, I now hope they never, ever win any big tournament in the near future. The fans deserve many more decades of football misery for this.

Overall well executed doc with some glaring omissions and missed opportunities. It seems to somehow idealize and normalize English hooligan culture. There's an odd hands off, no judgement here, attitude that pervades the 90 minutes of this documentary. The authors seem to have completely forgotten that in 1985 all English soccer clubs had been banned to play in European competitions for 5 years following the Heysel tragedy, where 37 Italians died following the actions of Liverpool hooligans during the Juventus Italy, Liverpool match. So again, Italy, England, hooligans. Fortunately this time, fate had that England lost the game otherwise there could have been another tragedy. All this escaped the authors and a pervasive moral relativism tells us that there's really no difference between the Italian dad going to the stadium with his daughter and regular tickets and the lovely fella jumping on the bus and getting into the stadium by braking down the barricades and evading the police. They are both fans that love soccer after all .