Photograph by Muhammad Ghafari
Children as young as eight years-old have been used as “mules” for older relatives to smuggle flares, smoke bombs, and other pyrotechnics into Premier League football grounds a survey has revealed.
The survey, commissioned by the premier League, claims that 86% of football fans are concerned about pyrotechnics at stadiums, with a third of fans having been affected by them in some way.
The number of pyrotechnics incidents is continuing to rise at football stadiums, with 96 cases already recorded in the first three months of this season, compared to 172 throughout the 2011-12 season and eight incidents the year before.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Cathy Long, head of supporter services at the Premier League said:
“It’s the biggest concern we’ve got among fans at the moment…There have been incidents across the world where people have had bad injuries or died. We’ve been lucky that our leagues haven’t had such major issues yet, but we want to stop that from happening.”
Pyrotechnics at football games are a common occurrence across much of Europe, with many fans believing that they add some atmosphere and colour to the stadium, and this European influence has slowly made its way across the Channel. However, many fans also worry about the dangers of using such items in crowds where people are in such close proximity to each other with little chance of being able to move out of the way if things do go wrong.
Manchester United, Everton, and Wigan Athletic have been the locations of the most pyrotechnic incidents so far this season according to the UK Football Policing Unit.
