When English clubs travel to Seville there’s usually some sort of trouble, and with Manchester United there this week it’s grabbing some Spanish headlines. That isn’t to say the fans go there and cause havoc, more so that police are over aggressive and travelling supporters are treated poorly.
Before Liverpool fans travelled to Seville in November, there had been reports of the ‘English hooligans’ arriving after Reds fans had previously got tickets for the Spanish side’s end at the Europa League Final.
Liverpool fans were then treated poorly in Spain which led to the club seeking explanations from the Seville side of things.
On Tuesday evening, El Desmarque reported there’ll be a big policing effort for Manchester United’s visit to the city because of previous problems with Manchester City and Juventus.
Whilst it’s said there was no noticeable trouble from Liverpool fans (although there’s no mention of their poor treatment), ‘Manchester City hooligans’ are picked out.
In 2015, we covered reports from Spain that Manchester City fans had been attacked in Seville. After incidents in the first match in Manchester (which were strangely put down to Polish fans), Sevilla fans were said to have attacked O’Neills pub where the travelling English fans were.
It was very much seen as an attack on the Manchester City supporters, with Diario de Sevilla saying the club’s fans chanted “City, City, City” and that was ‘to signal triumph at having repelled the attack’.
El Desmarque even published a video of what happened.
And yet still, it’s the English fans routinely dismissed as the trouble causers and ‘hooligans’, this time Manchester United.
Fans following Jose Mourinho’s team are also congregating around O’Neills and will surely hope the big police effort is more about stopping them being attacked than rough treatment of the travelling support, as Liverpool and others have experienced.
