Just saw this on mcfc's subreddit and thought it may be interesting for people to read about a City fan's first hand account of the shit storm in Marseille. Obviously a bit off-topic but interesting anyway to get an idea of what was happening over there.

I understand if the mods don't think this fits in on this subreddit but a lot of Euro2016 stuff is getting posted and I think it is a good read

Hey Guys

I've been in Marseille since Wednesday 8th June and got back last night so thought I would do you a little write up and share a few pictures of what I saw first hand. The pictures are links to my instagram, hit it up with a follow if you like.

First off: I saw a ton of misinformation being reported early on about England fans and almost all of it is utter nonsense. Yes there were a few morons there to cause trouble, but 99.99% of them were just lads there to get drunk and sing songs.

The first day I was there was before any of the other fans arrived and the place was fairly quiet and peaceful. First impression of Marseille is that it's quite impoverished - Graffiti everywhere - but it's actually quite beautiful. My friend described it as a diamond in the rough, and I feel it's an apt description.

Being the only one of my friends who could speak a bit of French was an issue though as we found the locals were painfully unwilling a lot of the time to engage in English. This was to the point that when they did try and speak English it was a surprise and made things a lot easier. I'm convinced a vast majority of restaurants would have had a lot more income if they provided people with an English menu. Maybe we were expected a nicer reception from the locals, or maybe it's our English arrogance kicking in.

On Thursday we spent most of our time exploring - We went up to the Palais de Pharo and the Notre Dame de la Garde which is the highest point in Marseille. It was about 30 degrees and a really tough walk. You can get a little bus to the top but the only people we saw taking that were fat people or old people. Afterwards we stumbled across the Queen Vic pub which was an English pub and you could tell the English had arrived.

As an armchair football fan, I didn't know what to expect. I have been to limited football games in my life and they're only local teams - Ebbsfleet United and Gillingham - so I'm not overly familiar with popularly sung songs. These guys at the Queen Vic seemed to sing 10 German Bombers and Fuck the IRA over and over though, which was entertaining and we all joined in. There was nothing malicious about any of this, just fifty odd guys singing crass songs which was hugely entertaining to the locals.

Come the evening on Thursday, everything was fairly pleasant. I even met some City fans who were actually from Manchester. They were decent chaps and we had drinks together. They offered us tickets to the England game on Saturday but they were £150 each and we were sceptical they were even real tickets so decided it wasn't worth the risk.

While we were having drinks though, we heard an explosion and people suddenly started running past us. We weren't really sure what to do so we just continued drinking until we suddenly saw lots of local french-algerians run past smashing up the place, grabbing chairs and launching them at England fans. Here's a shaky video of what I saw going on. Interestingly all the worlds media started emailing me about this video and I'm sure it got swallowed up in some of the video's published around the world which was semi cool.

To my knowledge this attack was entirely unprovoked, but according to the media it was because the England fans were singing about ISIS. Not sure how true any of this is but the England fans were just being loud and obnoxious for the most part.

Then the riot police arrived on the scene and I got my first taste of teargas. Teargas is unpleasant, but not as bad as I expected. It's just like getting a large dose of pepper in your eyes and throat. The first time I got hit with it though was pretty scary and the whole situation was fairly terrifying as the locals were just swarming people and throwing stuff. This whole situation ended up agitating most of the English contingent of fans who rallied around one bar not far from the Queen Vic and we ended up drinking until the early hours singing various football songs - notably Will Griggs is on fire.

On Friday we were planning to go to Nice for the day, but we were too hungover and shell shocked from the drama and the media interest in Marseille. We figured it would've cooled down now though and headed back to the scene of all the previous nights drama at the Old Port. We imagined it would be a bit of a party atmosphere as France were playing Romania.

French and English joined together to sing both national anthems, along with songs about the EU, the IRA, Boris Johnson and David Cameron. We all celebrated together when France scored and it was a really awesome party atmosphere.

At least it was until teargas appeared from nowhere in the middle of the crowd just after Payet scored. We were all sitting round singing and drinking causing no hassle except for some noise, but then we were teargassed.

At this point things turned sour really really fast. Riot police were being charged and bottles were being thrown. Riot dogs were on the scene and things were just seriously unpleasant. The English were rallying together and genuinely were fucking livid with the French police. This particular image sums up the night and is the defining picture of my experience in Marseille to be honest.

A really good night ruined by fucking heavy handed riot police.

By this point we were well aware that it was only going to get worse on Saturday, as there weren't many Russians at all about on Friday.

Saturday was a complete shit show. I was in this crowd singing and enjoying ourselves and then we were assaulted by Russian maniacs. Coordinated attacks by Russians looking to fuck up the English. These guys weren't drunk hooligans, they were here to cause damage and fuck people up. I saw one person get roundhouse kicked off a bike and was seriously injured and others just getting beaten up. It felt like a genuine war zone.

After this point the police ordered all the bars to be shut down which only made things worse as you now have thousands of angry Englishmen standing around full of adrenaline. The riot police formed walls like this to try and stop English fans from getting around but it just made them more violent. I lost track of the amount of chairs and bottles I saw flying through the air.

As we couldn't watch the game at any bars, we decided to go over to the Stadium and make our way to the Fanzone. Some fellas came up to us and offered us some tickets for 50€ each and we decided to risk it. To our surprise the tickets were genuine and we got in.

It was a magnificent stadium and the atmosphere was great until the end when the Russians went mental but thankfully we got out of there before we got into any hassle, although they did close the Metro because of what seemed like overcrowding forcing us to walk about 45 minutes home...

Sunday we recovered and were supposed to fly home, but our flight was cancelled last minute (fuck you Gatwick) so we had to stay an extra night. Hoping EasyJet will reimburse us for the money. However, all the football drama calmed down by Monday.

One other thing I would I would add is that I don't really know why 90% of football fans are northern. There were very few people from London or the South there. Anyone explain why?

Also I met a number of American Arsenal fans who were friendly enough, but I'm not sure Marseille was a good place for them to visit. They seemed bewildered by English football culture and didn't deal with jokes very well when fans told them to stop calling it soccer.

Feel free to ask any questions.

tldr: Went to Marseille, drunk beer, sung songs, got teargassed, it was all worth it.