Bell: World Cup riots, hooligan violence, among the thugs in the bad old days

A World Cup game and the riots no one who was there will ever forget

It’s as real as yesterday. In some ways, more real. The fear, the panic, the adrenaline rush, the smell of tear gas, the sight of blood, the knives, the bricks, the bottles.

Yes, funny what you recall. So many bottles flying through the air, missiles with labels. Evian.

Heineken. Trouble in the streets Every World Cup, and especially when England plays in the World Cup, I can’t help but think of Marseille in 1998. I remember Chris Nelson, my boss at the paper, telling me to get on the next train out of Paris going south, the train to the French port of Marseille.

He says there’s trouble. Rioting. Violence.

Bloody battles waged in the street. Ugliness broadcast around the world. England was scheduled to play Tunisia.

Before the match, English fans square off against Tunisians and local North African youth in a city with a lot of local North African youth. On the train down to Marseille there’s Darren, a carpenter from Lancashire, explaining what’s what. “Police get a bit strong, the locals come to have a go, some lads get beaten up.

There’s always a reason.” There is going to be more trouble. The train arrives.

I score a ticket from a scalper who is persuaded by two tough lads to sell it at a reasonable price. The atmosphere at the game is brilliant. The singing.

The flag waving. Strangers coming up and asking if you’re from Manchester or Sunderland or Barnsley. And England wins the game.

But the nastier battle of Marseille is far from over. Before the final whistle, bottles fly from the Tunisian stands. It is a preview of what is to follow.

At the train station, hoping to get back to the calm of Paris, all hell breaks loose. A bomb explodes. There’s the ee-ah, ee-ah of emergency vehicles.

There is smoke in the air, lots of it. A stairway at the train station is full of people. It is hot, scorching hot and a world away from anywhere else.

On the stairs and at the top of the stairs are mostly the English. At the bottom of the stairs are the Tunisians and local North Africans. What’s this?

A riot cop jumps out of a police car and tosses a canister. People yell it’s CS gas. They’ve seen this before.

It stings. Then there’s the taste. Bottles fly from both sides.

“When they’re throwing bottles, we’ve got to defend yourselves,” says William of Southampton, who promptly throws a bottle. The English try to charge down the stairs. The French riot police swing their batons with maximum force to push them back.

There is violence on many streets in the city turning them into carpets of glass from all the bottles and smashed windows. A bottle hits a car, a driver and passenger flee and the car is set on fire. A throat is slashed, a knife is plunged into a gut.

I head to a pay phone inside the train station to call Calgary. The adrenaline is just rushing. Two teens in Tunisian colours swear at me thinking I’m English.

They want to fight. Two English supporters with very short haircuts and very big boots see what’s happening and move toward the teens. One teen runs.

The other does not. Can still see it. Boots kicking the kid in the groin.

The boots kicking him wherever they can land while he’s in the fetal position. They finally get tired, let out loud laughs and stagger on. A guy in an England jersey has a bloodied face and with blood gushing from his nose.

He’d been cornered and beaten until some of his mates came to the rescue. The crowd makes its way to the station platform. There is an overnight train to Paris with too few seats.

The French authorities herd us on to the train and tell us to sleep in the luggage compartments or in the aisle. A voice from someone in the back. “Is this the train Hitler made you surrender in?”

They decide to put us on another train with military police and their machine guns on board. Now there is fear. What if the military cops kick the crap out of us?

What if they drop us off in some North African neighbourhood on the outskir ts of Marseille? Then the bomb goes off in the station. It’s called a controlled explosion.

One bloke draws the curtains on this train now nicknamed The Train from Hell and people sleep or drink or talk about how they’ll tell the folks back home about their great time in Marseille. Hours later we go our separate ways in Paris. Related BELL:

Stampede tent noise battle — Calgary's inner city fights back, finally Bell: Mayor Farkas warns Danielle Smith — don't try to push around Calgary You know, I’ve covered thousands upon thousands of stories over 36 years. Few of the hot topic of the day stories come to mind. They’re done, they’re read, we all move on.

Not this one, not this one at all. Especially when the World Cup is on and England is playing. rbell@postmedia.com