The Not-So-Beautiful Game | Detective
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Welcome. Welcome to True Spies. Week by week, mission by mission, you'll hear the true stories behind the world's greatest espionage operations. You'll meet the people who navigate this secret world. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position?

This is True Spies. I just stood against the wall because I didn't know what direction things were being thrown at me from. And a lad stood next to me who I didn't know. I heard him moan and when I looked, a rocket hit him in the face and he just went down to the floor. This is True Spies. Episode 44. The Not So Beautiful Game. When I'd been trained as an undercover officer, they didn't set up a riot like that and say, this is what's going to happen to you.

That was all new to me. I could have been the lad who got the brick in the face and that could have been the end of my career then. It's the summer of 1990 in the Italian beach resort of Rimini, but Gary Rogers isn't on holiday. He's working undercover among thousands of English football fans, trying to prevent the trouble that often breaks out when England's footballers play abroad. You may not follow football, but this story is about much more than a game.

You know, and as a police officer, I should have been helping that guy, and there was nothing I could do. It was madness. The madness that in those days followed English football fans to international football tournaments. This was the biggest of them all, the World Cup.

Italia '90. I was that concerned for my safety because there was tear gas being fired by the local Italian police. It's trying to obviously stop the English fans who were on the rampage. And you talk about having backup. I mean, there was no backup for us that day because you could never ever plan for a riot like that. In 1990, Gary Rogers was feeling his way into a new job.

He'd been a police officer since the late 70s, sometimes in uniform, more often not. He'd worked in surveillance, in plain clothes, on a motorbike, chasing bank robbers. Now he was after football hooligans. And the thinking then was that the only way to take football hooligans down was from the inside. Gary had to look like one and act like one.

So, before he flew to Italy, he shaved his head. I made the decision the night before I went to take all the hair off and basically I never grew it back again since. But to me, looking the part was half the battle. Gary didn't have to wait long for confirmation that he made a convincing skinhead.

When I flew out to Italy, the amount of times I got stopped at airports and searched, as opposed to anyone who was coming through in a pinstripe suit, you were automatically stereotyped, which was good for me as a police officer because that was the effect I wanted to put out. So it proved that what I was doing was working. Gary accessorised. He added earrings in both ears, a false tattoo...

and a new surname. You can't go in using your real name, so you have to come up with a false CV and a legend as they call it. So, Gary Rogers, the police officer, became Gary McAlindon, the football fan. 'Maka' for short. Gary McAlindon was basically just an out-and-out villain. I posed as a builder basically, so I had a builder's business.

But that was just a bit more of a front for, because I would be doing things supposedly, as well as the building. Because I had a van with all the names of the builders' works on the side. And that was a front for my villainous things that I was involved in, supposedly. If you were a boy born in Manchester in the late 1950s, football was hard to avoid. Then, as now, the only question was, United or City?

I always supported, still do, Manchester United. They were famous even then, the Red Devils. And they were good. They won a lot of trophies in the 1960s. And Old Trafford, their home ground, was packed on Saturday afternoons. Gary used to go too, but not that often. Mum and Dad didn't have that much money, so it wasn't feasible for me to be able to go to a lot of games all the time. But whenever I did have the money, I would go.

It didn't, however, cost anything to go up to the cliff where Manchester United trained. The main thing was you could stand outside. Sometimes they would let you in the big gates to stand and watch the players training. If you're a fan of English football of a certain age, you'll know who Bobby Charlton is. You'll remember Nobby Styles. But even if you're not a fan, you've probably heard of the other great Manchester United player of that era.

Perhaps the first British footballer to acquire the status of a rock star. I always remember one specific time when Georgie Best was leaving after the training session and he was in his E-Type Jag, an expensive motor. He pulled up outside because he couldn't drive off because everyone was blocking his way basically. He was forced to stop. Everybody herded around the car and I was sat on his bonnet. I won't tell you what he said to me but at least I can always say George Best spoke to me once.

But being a football fan could also bring trouble. Where allegiances are strong, rivalries are intense. You felt it when you went to the youth club. You could have your scarf on with the red and white and that could be a recipe then for somebody having to go at you. You felt it even more when you went to a game. Football grounds in England in the early 1970s were hostile environments.

Young men packed the terracing behind the goals. There was no seating, just wide concrete steps and wrought iron crush barriers. There might not have been a roof. The toilets were, shall we say, basic. And the chanting began long before the game did. Sometimes witty, but often abusive. Thousands of voices in unison hurling obscenity and threats at their opponents. You could feel it building up and as the away fans would arrive,

They knew there was always a possibility of there going to be trouble. And there was those that would come from opposing teams who came with that intention, basically. There was a kind of uniform. Fans wore denim jackets, jeans that were a bit too short and large boots. They tied scarves around their necks and around their wrists. And if they weren't all looking for a fight, there were plenty who were. A new expression entered the language, football hooligan.

Some clubs acquired a particular reputation. Manchester United was one of them.

The reputation United fans had for hooliganism during the 1970s was quite high really. When I used to go to their home games, I used to observe that and I would see little pockets of trouble outside the ground and more so after a match, especially if United lost, those individuals or that group of people who were hooligans at the time in the 70s would then go and actively seek out the opposing fans as they were obviously trying to leave the stadium.

in their eyes, to get some sort of revenge for having lost the match. By the time he was 16, Gary was a trainee. A police cadet, as they were known. It ran in the family to some extent. His elder brother was in the police. He'd come home and tell stories. And you sensed that Gary was excited by that.

His dad worked for a time as a police dog handler. And then there was a TV show. The Sweeney was called. The Sweeney was based on the Real Life Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police in London, which investigated robberies,

The Squad got its nickname from Cockney rhyming slang: Sweeney Tot, Flying Squad. The show featured two hard-bitten plainclothes detectives. Excellent police officers, you would say, watching them and they got results, should I say. The whole ethos of the Sweeney was hard-hitting and their personal lives were affected because being the sort of police officers they were and the life they led,

They had to mix with villains, that's how they got informants. So they'd be regularly in pubs with informants who were, you know, tasty characters. The Sweeney, for me, was a fantastic programme. Was it the Sweeney that gave Gary the idea of working in plain clothes? The idea of working undercover one day? Perhaps it was. Gary started out in uniform, as everyone does, but in the early 1980s, he joined the regional crime squad.

I became a dedicated surveillance motorcyclist, a plainclothes motorcyclist. We would get information, for example, that particular individuals were committing a particular crime, for example, burglaries or armed robberies. We would then set up an operation to follow those individuals, observe them, a discrete list that they don't know they're being observed, and hopefully then, by doing that, you would then obtain evidence with which you could later charge and get them convicted.

Gary had got a taste for the surreptitious, and it was football that would provide him with a way into the real undercover stuff. In the 80s, English football was going through hell really, wasn't it? It really was. And by 1985, it had hit rock bottom. A couple of snapshots. A televised game between two middle-ranking English clubs, Luton Town and Millwall, which ended with running battles on the pitch.

Seats torn from their hinges and thrown at the police. Golf balls. A knife thrown at a goalkeeper. "Nasty, vicious and surreal," said one of the managers. "A game in Birmingham and another running battle. This time with fans from Leeds. A collapsed wall and a 15-year-old crushed to death in the rubble." And then there was Heysel. An old, crumbling stadium in Brussels. And a night of total disaster.

The champions of Italy, Juventus, were playing the champions of England, Liverpool. As the stadium began to fill, Liverpool fans mounted a charge across a section of terracing that had been kept deliberately empty to separate them from their Italian counterparts. As the Italians dispersed, a wall collapsed again. This time there were 39 dead. There was one immediate response from the European football authorities: English clubs were banned from all their competitions.

and the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher got involved. She spoke of her sense of shame and outrage,

And she expressed the hope that the sickening events in Brussels would unite all decent people in helping to eradicate hooliganism. Maggie Thatcher led the way, I think. She wanted to introduce new legislation to give police more powers to deal with these so-called hooligans. So she called in Gary's former boss. Gary refers to him only by the initial H.

Now this guy was renowned. I worked with him on the regional crime squad and at that time he was the only undercover officer in the area. So he went to see Maggie Thatcher and she wanted something done in relation to the hooligans. So he then set up the Amiga department, basically to infiltrate hooligan sectors of certain clubs. Gary had heard whispers about this new unit. This was right up his street.

So he knocked on H's door. This was a department which was very, very secretive. It wasn't advertised as other jobs would be in the force. So I had to have an interview with him and then go on the course, the deep undercover course. The deep undercover course. That sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

You were tested to the hilt on that course. I'm not going to give certain things of it away, but you were tested both physically and mentally to your limits because they wanted to observe how you were in real situations. So, for example, on the course, you're going to meet certain individuals as it ran who you at the time thought were real villains.

and situations would arise which would put you in compromising situations and what they were doing on the course was observing how you dealt with that. Is this something you think you could do? Walk into a pub in, say, a rough part of Manchester to meet someone you thought was a criminal and do a deal with them. Could you handle the pressure? You're a police officer. You're pretending not to be a police officer.

and you're going to meet people who are villains, who might then suss out who you are. So from the minute you step into that pub, you know, you're worried, I would say. Gary remembers an occasion one unfortunate trainee on his course made a cardinal error. When offered whatever it was by the alleged criminal, he blew his cover with one short phrase.

Let me go and make some inquiries. Now that is something a police officer would say. I'm going to go away and make some inquiries about that. And that, in real life, would leave an undercover police officer in a very tricky position. So you don't want to be coming out with sayings that police officers would use. You don't want to have mannerisms that police officers would have. If you can't get out of that habit and not say those sort of things and not do things that police officers do, you're never ever going to be an undercover police officer.

Gary calls it de-policing, shedding those little habits, body language and patterns of speech that might give you away. He seems to have succeeded because in early 1990 he was invited to join Amiga. The unit was already well established. It had carried out operations against hooligans associated with two local football clubs, Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers.

At the time Gary joined, attention was focused on supporters of the club that he himself had followed as a boy, Manchester United. And almost immediately, there was a problem. Because I was going to be an undercover officer, they gave me all the information, all the intelligence that they'd got together to date. And I sat down to look at that because I needed to check

that whoever these targets were and their associates were not known to me or I wasn't known to them, if you see what I'm saying. So as I worked through that intelligence, I then came across a guy who I went to school with, who lived where I lived as a kid and went to the same school as me, the same primary school. Put yourself in Gary's shoes for a minute. You've worked hard to get a spot on this team. You've been through the deep cover course. You're raring to go.

And now it looks like after all that hard work, you can't go undercover after all. It would be tempting to keep shtum, wouldn't it? Not admit that you've recognised this fellow. I could have kept my mouth shut and said nothing because bear in mind this is my first week in the department. But he knew that if he didn't put his hand up and admit to knowing this man, he would put not only himself but all his colleagues in danger. So I had to declare that I knew this guy.

And for that reason, I thought I'd fallen at the first hurdle, basically. So clearly, Gary couldn't go undercover on this particular operation. But there was still a job for him in the unit. He began to work overtly, gathering evidence, which often meant filming football fans as they gathered before a game. He remembers one incident that made the risks involved with this line of work frighteningly clear. His team had staked out one of the local pubs, the Grey Parrot.

Grey Parrot in Hulme was a place the Man United faithful fans, the hooligan side, would congregate at. One of many pubs, but this was a particular one, the Grey Parrot. It was a squat square building from the 1960s, surrounded by a lot of open space, a good place for a surveillance team. They would always meet in there, have a skinful first and then make their way down into the city centre in the hope of coming across the opposing fans.

Two of Gary's undercover colleagues were in the pub that day, along with several hundred fans. And then the call went up that they were about to leave, and they all start en masse to leave the pub. Even those outside then joined the group, and they marched towards the city centre, all together like a military operation. And then the whole crowd suddenly stopped.

The cry that went up was that they had a couple of suites with them. What they meant by a couple of suites was that they had two police officers and they pointed out the two undercover lads. Somebody knew who these two undercover officers were.

Remember Gary spotting that he'd been at school with one of the young men under surveillance? That could have been me stood there that day and that lad had recognised me. You can probably imagine what happens when a mob of young men, out looking for trouble, discover two undercover cops in their midst. Everyone's had a few drinks. Their blood is up. Gary could only look on helplessly.

There was nothing he could do to help his two colleagues. The group around them then moved back and they were isolated, just a pair of them. And that was when the cry went up to give them a good hiding basically. They were kicked. One had to go to hospital, had stitches. They were given a good kick in and then left. We don't know how they identified them but from that day on, them two were out of that job.

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And I absolutely love all the little period details packed into this world. I don't want to give too much away because the real fun of June's journey is seeing where this adventure will take you. But I've just reached a part of the story that's set in Paris.

And I'm so excited to get back to it. Like I said, if you love a salacious little mystery, then give it a go. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Hello, listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast, What Should I Read Next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tech all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read.

They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page-turner to help them escape the stresses of work, socializing,

school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for What Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more. Gary had witnessed at first hand what was at stake. There was a song popular on the football terraces in those days about killing police officers.

Why would you want to risk your life in a crowd of alcohol-fueled young men, high on adrenaline and looking for a fight week after week? What would make you carry on? It made me question, as it would any sane person, is this for me? And obviously, history shows that I chose that it was. Again, being a young guy at the time,

And you have this macho thing being in the police. So you're not going to go in and say, I've just seen that and that's not for me. Because you'd be classed as a wimp. Because it's a rough, tough sort of set up in the police. And although that happened, it didn't put me off doing that job. So Gary started mixing with football fans. He got to know a few of them. And they weren't necessarily what you'd expect.

A lot of these people held down, you know, proper jobs, so to speak, in the week. There was one guy who was involved in the Manchester United set-up as a hooligan who worked for Great Manchester Police in their training school. So in the week he worked in the admin and at weekends he became identified as one of the hooligans with the United set-up. So you ask your question, what's caused him to be like that?

Then there was Tottenham Steve. And he was a postman at the time and he would utilise his job to send all the credit cards through the post then. He used to pinch all the credit cards. He was married with three kids. He'd left his wife and kids and his sole purpose was to support Tottenham.

And I say support because he would come to the matches and during the match, he'd have his back to the match and he would be talking to us and he wanted to arrange to go and have a fight with whoever afterwards. So when I say he was a fan of Tottenham, in my mind, he was a moron because he couldn't get two roots about Tottenham. He was there just to fight. He was just there to cause trouble. And he wasn't an isolated sort of person. There was lots like him in them groups.

Some of them went to Italy for the World Cup in the summer of 1990. The Italian authorities were very nervous. It would be the first time a team from England had played in Italy since the horror of Heysel. Remember, all English club teams had been banned from Europe as a result of that evening in Brussels. So instead of Rome or Milan, England's three initial games were scheduled for Cagliari on the island of Sardinia.

the Italian authorities were playing it safe. The England fans were basically incarcerated at Cagliari. They were put there because they hopefully could control them a lot better. But when you think, there was 3,000, I think it was, 3,200 police officers drafted in from the mainland to Sardinia, which gave them then a police force of 4,000. And they brought them in specifically because of the England fans. Things got tense on matchdays.

One writer who was there has described the stadium as an armed camp, hundreds of police with rifles and handguns, and a pair of helicopters circling above. There was some trouble, but mostly the fans were good-natured. Most of them weren't there to fight. Most of them were there to enjoy themselves, and that meant drinking beer.

I think I've got one picture where the banner says it all really. They were from Mansfield and Manchester, this group, and their banner read 'Beer Monsters'. It's a title they were obviously proud to have. Gary's job in Sardinia was to blend in, to make out as though he was a beer monster too. So he spent a lot of time in bars and he had to perfect the art of appearing to drink a lot of beer without actually doing so.

I wonder if they taught him how to do that on his deep undercover course. Well, there would be a lot of beer purchased, but not consumed is what I can say. There'd be loads of glasses around. You could put a full one down, pick a half one up,

and come back again. It creates an illusion that you've drank half that beer and then you could wander off again and pick up an empty one and you've drunk it as far as they're concerned. For us to be credible and to keep your eye on the squirrel, so to speak, you had to do that. The job was to spot potential trouble and nip it in the bud. No mobile phones, of course, in 1990. So Gary and his undercover colleagues, there were five of them in total,

would always know where the nearest payphone was. We'd have to keep contact regularly with the control room, which was via telephone, a particular phone number with a code name so that once you rang in, give the code, they'd know it was us. Tear gas. Your call has been forwarded. Please hold.

The authorities, nobody knew who we were or where we were because H who ran it wouldn't allow that to happen. The only updates we ever got was from him when he would meet us at safe houses. So Gary, Gary McAlindon, remember, with the shaved head and the earrings, had to live on his wits. You're mixing with people who in your real life you wouldn't choose to mix with. Like the likes of Tottenham's Steve. I needed him because I was getting information from him.

but I wouldn't choose to knock about with him. And although I've just said what I've said, some of those people I would have chose if it had been who they thought I was, I'd have them as friends because they were all right. If I'd been who they thought I was, that's always the catch when you work undercover. You're never yourself. You're never what you seem to be. You're not Gary Rogers. You're Gary McAlinden with a shaven head.

The Full Kojak, he called it. A reference to another 1970s TV show, which starred Telly Savalas as a bald-headed, lollipop-sucking New York detective.

One of the bars where we used to go, the bar owner gave me a metal drinks tray which had a big picture of Telly Savalas on it. That's how well received we were by the locals, which further down the line annoyed me when on match days some of the England fans did what they did because it's like throwing that hospitality back in their face. After three games in Cagliari, the England team had qualified for the next round. Quarantine on Sardinia was over.

The whole circus moved to Rimini on the Adriatic coast and Gary was suddenly at the centre of a full-scale riot. I just stood against the wall because I didn't know what direction things were being thrown at me from. And a lad stood next to me who I didn't know. I heard him moan. And when I looked, a rocket hit him in the face and he just went down to the floor. It had all happened so fast that Gary just found himself caught up in the middle of it.

Italian fans had clashed with the English fans. Chairs and bottles had been thrown, and the riot police had waded in with buttons and tear gas. Did memories of Heysel play a part? Were the Italians out for revenge? The police as well as the fans. Gary felt very exposed. To the Italian police, he looked like any other English football fan.

Eventually, I ended up herded with the rest of them, lay flat down on my back and they stood over us with their rifles. And if they saw you get up or they saw you trying to take pictures or whatever, they'd come and give you a good hiding or smash your camera up. But Gary couldn't resist the temptation. He took a snap anyway. A policeman in a riot helmet checking his rifle. A tear gas canister jutting menacingly out of the barrel.

in the background, the balconies of what looked like holiday apartments. I think once a police officer, always a police officer. And I had the camera with me and I just took the picture. I took it in a way that they didn't see it. I mean, I've still got those pictures today and you can see them stood over us with the rifles with the tear gas on and they're all helmeted up with the riot gear. Gary spent a total of four weeks with the England fans that summer.

He would see plenty more of them over the coming years. Faces became familiar. He established relationships. It all helped to build his cover story. Especially when things got tasty, as Gary likes to say. And it wasn't always the English fans' fault. There were occasions when just by being English fans, they got labelled as troublemakers when it wasn't the case.

There was, for example, a night in Turkey. That trip to Izmir was when I was in a bar the night before the game and everything was going along nice. We were in there having a good time basically. No trouble at all. And then there was the sound of glass smashing and the English fans in the bar realised that they were under attack.

Tables and chairs were being thrown in through the window from outside. So there was glass flying everywhere and all anybody wanted to do was get outside for your own safety. At first you thought it was a bomber had gone off and we all made our way outside only to be met by the local Turkish contingent.

who were stood looking at us and drawing their fingers across the throat in a throat-cutting image. And then the police arrived and they made their own mind up as to what had happened. As we know, people who followed the England football team had a certain reputation. It probably wasn't unusual for police forces overseas to draw conclusions when there was trouble. But on this occasion, Gary insists they weren't doing anything wrong.

They were just having a quiet drink. Well, okay, maybe not quiet. The English didn't do anything and all the English fans got arrested. So did Gary. And like that night in Rimini, when he'd found himself lying on the forecourt of a petrol station, surrounded by Italian riot police, there was nothing he could do. He couldn't stick his hand up and say, "Excuse me, I'm actually a policeman. Could you let me go, please?"

All those years building his image, the shaved head, the earrings, the carefully honed story about the dodgy building firm, all that would have been for nothing. So Gary had to take what was coming. We were all put on a bus and taken to the local prison.

and we were kept there overnight. We had to spend the night in this caged cell which held about 40 of us and there was a hole in the floor in the corner which was the toilet and it stunk to high heaven. Tough if you're a football fan banged up for nothing more than having a drink or two.

Tougher still if you're banged up for doing your job and you've got to take it on the chin. They are who they are and don't have to worry about that, but we are who we are pretending to be somebody else. And you had to keep that up, even though you were tired, drained and in that situation. But hopefully in the knowledge that at some point your welfare team was going to make arrangements to get you out. But there was an upside to the situation.

It further strengthened the bond between Gary McAlinden and his colleagues and the fans they'd infiltrated. There was people there with us in that bar who, after that event, we went on to meet further down the line. And that incident at that bar became an excellent talking point because we were there, they were there, they knew we were there, so that improved our credibility 100%. So what did all this achieve, I hear you asking?

Did mixing with the fans really enable the police to spot impending trouble and stop it from happening? There were spontaneous events where you came across them by chance, but then there were other things where they pre-planned them and they would know where they were going to be and they would go and give a certain signal and they'd be off. During the European Championship in Sweden in 1992,

the authorities made a significant effort to provide facilities for the visiting fans. The Swedish authorities in Malmo, in the square, put up the tents with the beer tents, etc. You know, entertainment for the England fans. They did everything they could in the power to appease them. And this particular day, we found out by being with the England fans, so-called fans, that they were going to put two lads up on the beer tent and start bouncing as if it was a trampoline.

And what the signal was going to be when the authorities went to get them down, that was when the signal would be to kick off and cause a mass riot. But Gary and his colleagues were able to put a spoke in the wheel.

by relaying intelligence back to their control room that trouble was about to start. They decided to leave them up there. So they didn't go and get them down, they just let them keep bouncing up and down on the top of the beer tent. And you could see the frustration and they couldn't understand why nobody was reacting to it. So nothing happened that day because it took away that so-called signal that they wanted.

Gary spent five years as an undercover officer. He moved on from football and spent a long time investigating organised crime gangs in Manchester and beyond. Dangerous work. Gary has no regrets. It was something that I relished. I loved it and I wouldn't have had it any other way. Gary eventually left the police in 2005. 30 years since he joined as a 16-year-old cadet, he still lives in the area he once worked undercover.

And even today, he says, he's on his guard. I'm still very, you know, restricted on where I go and what I do. And that's the price I have to pay. But, as I said to you, it's a choice I've made. And I'm always, always wary about where I go.

I'm always looking. And there's one place you'll never find him nowadays. Old Trafford. Or any other football ground. I watch it on the telly. I'm always a keen observer there. But I would never, ever dream of going to a football match. At all now. Not at all. In some ways, doing what I did as an undercover police officer on the football ruined it for me. I'm Vanessa Kirby.

Disclaimer. The views expressed in this podcast are those of the subject. These stories are told from their perspective and their authenticity should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Join us next week for another encounter with true spies. We all have valuable spy skills and our experts are here to help you discover yours. Get an authentic assessment of your spy skills created by a former head of training at British Intelligence at spiescape.com.