By News18,Vivek Ganapathy

Copyright news18

The England versus Serbia FIFA World Cup 2026 European qualifiers match on Wednesday, September 10, was marred by heavy crowd disturbances at Belgrade’s iconic Red Star Stadium. Just as Thomas Tuchel’s side took a 3-0 lead against their Serbian rivals and looked set to secure a comfortable victory, an incident in the stands during the second half alerted the officials and ground security.
A major crowd disturbance was observed by the ITV commentary team before reporter Gabriel Clarke confirmed that security personnel had to move families and children from the ground’s main stand. Clarke revealed tempers had flared over a political argument among Serbian fans and led to some ugly scenes at the venue. Fortunately, the riot police intervened on time and took control of the situation.

09.09.2025, Serbia?? – England?󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, Serbian fans started chanting against the president, and immediately groups of people in black with caps appeared to silence the chants with their fists, click for more here: https://t.co/rVrp86L48q
FOLLOW NEW IG: https://t.co/nxIt71sbXp
All in… pic.twitter.com/WeEK3WV318
— Hooligans.cz Official (@hooliganscz1999) September 9, 2025

“It was rather unnerving for a few minutes as a few Serbian fans ran across that stand. There were families involved as well, and children had to be moved on,” said Clarke, as quoted by Sport Bible.
“It was Serbian fans arguing among themselves, a political dispute. Pro and anti-government sentiments. The police have moved in and calmed that incident down. So hopefully nothing more to report on that.”
Reports suggest no England fans were involved in the altercations, as they were sitting in different parts of the ground. Due to the major disturbance in the main stand, play had to be briefly stopped by the French referee Clement Turpin.
Earlier in the FIFA World Cup qualifier, Serbian fans had chanted against the neighbouring country of Kosovo. Notably, Kosovo is not recognised by Serbia as an independent state. The two nations are also barred from playing each other in international competitions due to geopolitical tensions.
The brief stoppage in play did little to halt the momentum that England carried into the second half after a goal apiece from captain Harry Kane, Noni Madueke and Ezri Konsa. Later on, Marc Guehi extended his team’s lead to 4-0 and a following strike from Marcus Rashford sealed England’s fantastic 5-0 victory in Belgrade.
England’s most comprehensive win of their qualifying campaign would’ve delighted Tuchel, who backs his team to continue improving and secure their berth at next year’s showpiece event.
“We had our learnings in the first two camps, especially, then a big pause, and now it’s World Cup season, which feels a bit different. We have to improve. I mean, this is part of football, that we are never satisfied as coaches. The perfect game does not exist, the perfect week does not exist,” Tuchel had told ITV ahead of the Serbia clash.
“There’s a lot to do. I think that we took the right conclusions from the first two camps, where we experimented a lot with formations, experimented a lot with combinations of players on the pitch. Now, we’ve narrowed down our long list, we’ve narrowed down the squad, and we’ll continue like this. The group is excellent in camp, and we will show that we’re on the right path.”