This football, I like it, another! To rephrase Thor a little bit.

England and Russia played against each other on Saturday and having Russian roots I thought, hey, why not. No clue about the Russian national football team, no prior research, not even a glimmer of a name, and my knowledge level about England’s team wasn’t much better – the only player I recognized was Wayne Rooney, and all I could come up with additionally was the oft-repeated comparison on his facial similarity with a certain beloved animated character. Oh, well, I never said I could do much.

Thus with basically an absense of feelings except curiousity on how this whole game would go I sat down to watch the match taking place in Marseille. I did predict the colours of the Russian team’s uniform’s correctly. Yay. Of course they were going to be red, vot do you mean.

I was just thinking this match was somewhat boring beyond the fact that my cluelessness already glaringly signifies the possibility of boredom, when suddenly England’s Eric Dier scored the first goal. Yes, goals are always sudden, that’s the thing that sets them apart, I know. The goal was half the fun, though, ultimately leading to the best part of the whole game as a screaming bunch of running players went nuts and failed to brake around this poor photographer.

He took it well, though. But Russia was not to be completely outdone, making jaws drop all over the stadium as they scored a (sudden) goal of their own during the three minutes after play. The look on Vasili Berezutski’s face as he demonstrated the usual victorious displays of emotion following his hit can only be described as “I AM BEAR.”

Despite the 1:1 tie, an amusing little summary of what is possibly one of the baselines of each national mentality emerges: England was “dejected”, according to multiple headlines in the media, while Russia acted like a winner.

It was impossible to ignore the staggering amount of violence taking place in the streets of Marseille as English and Russian football hooligans attacked each other in a seemingly endless frenzy of determined aggression. With widespread ugly incidents also taking place right in the stands of the stadium after the match ended, media, fans and locals alike are appalled. The acceleration level is dizzying and it is once again horrifying to see a sports environment or occasion abused purely for the purpose of destruction.

With the security concerns this year’s Euro brings, it is especially sad, and absolutely disgusting, to see this senseless violence happening, and one is particularly sorry for real fans who would never commit such a crime, not to mention the already overstretched law enforcement involved with keeping match locations safe and locals who must feel as if they are suddenly under siege in their own city.