Seriously, football grounds must be some of the most heavily CCTV’ed places in the country. Plus everything on the pitch is recorded in crystal clear 4K with tens of broadcast cameras. With season tickets, it’s a job but more than possible to identify every single person, trace them to their seat, and ban them for however long.
I understand why they do it - 200 police versus 2000 fans, is never going to end well - but I don’t agree with de-escalatory policing in general. It’s basically saying you’d be 100% arrested if you did this on your own, but if there’s a thousand of you, it’s fine because we can’t control it.
If they batoned, arrested and significantly fined the first 100 people on the pitch, I’m not sure the other thousand would join in. Or, cordon it off and arrest people one by one after. Just because there’s loads of people committing the same crime shouldn’t give you carte blanche to join in, it’s not fair on decent people who don’t and just want to be safe at the match. I’m still raging about the scenes at Wembley for the EURO final, how there wasn’t mass arrests there I’ll never know - terrible scenes, must have been so awful for families attending for what should have been a once in a lifetime special day.
In the end everyone’s right, you start consistently punishing the clubs with severe things like point deductions and forfeits, and they’ll quickly find the money to pay for enough policing to stop it. Stewards are largely decorative.
It is so out of order and has turned nasty. I’ve hated this trend of sending your child on with his selfie camera rolling to ask for Ronaldo’s shirt. When I used to go to nearly every home & away game it was carnage in the stands and a right laugh, but going on the playing surface was always a massive no-no. I don’t know what’s changed, but policing zero tolerance it would be a great start.
Edit: or moats. Moats and a dragon would work.