With so much footage circulating on social media, we’ve spoken to journalist Kyle Bonn to attempt to get a better picture of what unfolded at the Bank of America Stadium.
Kyle said: “What I understand from what players are saying, what fans on social media are saying, it really looks like the impetus for this was, at the end of the match the Uruguay players came over, highly emotional, 45 minutes up a man, couldn’t score, eliminated right at the doorstep of the final. They went to get their family from the stands and something happened that players feared for the safety of their family, whatever it was there was family involved.
WHAT IT’S LIKE TO WORK WITH LIVERPOOL’S NEW FIRST TEAM FITNESS COACH…
On the scenes in the stands: “It looked like a mess, that’s the best way I can describe it, a mess. What’s scary about it is that when you have that large a number of fans in that close proximity. It’s scary because you wonder how it’s possible to break something like that up. It just starts to escalate when large numbers of people descend on each other. You see this mass of people moving through the stands and my first thought was ‘How is anybody going to possibly break this up?’. I think that’s why it took so long to sort out.”
On how it finally de-escalated: “It was a combination of people coming to their senses eventually, for better or for worse the players by coming into the stands took the brunt of the attention which I guess maybe took the attention off their families which allowed their families to get to safety or find some space. I’m speculating here but maybe then the players saw their families were out of danger and brought them to their senses. But it took a while, there were a number of pockets of incidents.”
On potential punishment: “The only frame of reference we have is the Eric Cantona incident. I have no idea how this is going to play out there are a lot of factors at play here, and the idea that families are involved might give some leeway. We will see if FIFA gets involved or if CONMEBOL just handles it themselves i have no idea what the fallout will be at the club level for these players but there could be a real knock-on effect.”
Freedom, Fluidity, Formations & The Future | The Deep Dive
On the mixed zone: “We waited for a good 90 minutes and no one came through. I don’t know why but my best guess would be a combination of sorting out disciplinary matters, allowing players to calm down, allowing fans to leave the area before allowing players to exit the premises, and a combination of all those factors. There’s usually a good amount of time but we waited a while and it’s weird that not a single player came out.”
On the CONMEBOL statement: “It says nothing. It says so little I’m surprised. They said we condemn ‘violence of any kind in football’, they didn’t even make any attempt to pinpoint what they were referring to. It was so vague it was actually newsworthy how vague it was.” STATEMENT
Whilst the ugly scenes undoubtedly marred the events that unfolded beforehand, thankfully it appears nobody was seriously hurt and instead, it’s left to wait to discover what the fallout will be from events that have no place in football.