It's been a largely positive experience and there haven't been a great deal of incidents of the type we expected, the only thing we have really flagged up which has been significant has been the level of sexism which has been encountered by some women, often Russian women who have been confronted by fans.

Piara Powar

Categorized in : World

There has been nothing on a major scale and nothing from Russians, that was one of the concerns of course coming into the tournament. So that's all good news from our point of view.

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We know that during the World Cup period, the population sort of understand that they are in the spotlight, the world is watching.

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There's a strand of male culture you see in the UK, and to some extent other Anglo Saxon societies, prevalent among 20, 30 and even 40-year-olds, which is : you go abroad, you drink a fair amount, you sing songs and engage in banter, and pick on someone who is different to you, there's this pervasive sexism and racism. The idea that' anyone who isn't like us, we're going to sing about them and insult them and it's part of the lad's day out.'.

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In England, our stadiums are far safer, they're better stewarded, there are policing operations which are quite sophisticated, and actually some would argue that it's gone too far. Some would argue that those stadiums are quite sterile, that they lack the passion they once did.

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