An England fan has described how transport chaos left supporters struggling until the early hours of the morning to return to their accommodation after the 1-0 win over Serbia at Euro 2024.
Sam Shethran was forced to walk home in the rain from the VELTINS-Arena after witnessing a Jude Bellingham goal deliver the victory and said his fate was far better than others he saw stranded.
Problems, the England fan explained, began the moment he left the ground.
“It’s very poorly lit outside the stadium and most of the fans got funnelled down a slope, which was quite muddy because it had been raining all day,” he told the Express.
“We were all stumbling downwards, kids, women, everyone, in the darkness downhill on slippy surface.
“At the bottom it was a quite bottlenecked situation with a small gap for people to go through a gate so everyone was pushing together and it wasn’t very comfortable.
“People were having to like grab onto each other and it was poorly lit all the way down to where the trams and the buses going to Gelsenkirchen town centre were.”
However, when Sam and the other England fans had navigated this dimly lit, slippery route, they found another problem waiting for them.
“The trams and the buses were already jam-packed full so no-one could get on,” he continued.
“So me and [practically] everyone leaving the stadium just couldn’t get on any of them.
“[In the end] me and any other person who was fit and healthy enough for a 45 to 50-minute walk to Gelsenkirchen did that.
“Every coach and tram was jam-packed [and I’ve since heard] people were waiting three or four hours.
“I got to the place I was staying at 1am and saw [messages] on WhatsApp from people saying they were still waiting.
“There were a lot of really angry disappointed people. You got to Germany expecting German efficiency when it comes to travel and that was the complete opposite to what we had.”
Sam said that he saw on his walk home how packed trams were made even fuller as people attempted to board at stations further down the route.
It was a situation made all the more grim by the driving rain and unseasonably cold conditions in Germany last night.
“Every time it stopped more people would try to squeeze on,” he added. “I just felt sorry for the kids, the little girls with their dads especially in the wet and darkness. It was just really unpleasant.”
Local authorities in Gelsenkirchen have been contacted for comment and we are awaiting an official statement on the issues raised in this article.
