Essential on-the-ground information, practical advice and trusted insight for England fans abroad. From stadium guidance and city information to supporter updates and emergency contacts, Free Lions helps make travelling with the Three Lions safer, smoother and better informed — wherever they play.
Welcome to the Free Lions
For those unfamiliar with our publication, the Free Lions is produced by the Football Supporters’ Association and distributed to England supporters at every away match, including tournaments. It is created and distributed by our volunteer Fans’ Embassy team, who offer support, advice and information on the ground in each city and country that we play in.
We hope this website continues the Free Lions traditions that spans four decades, providing key information for travelling England supporters. As ever, the printed version of our ‘smaller’ 16-page match-specific fanzine will be available to collect in each city that we play in, starting with version 200 in Dallas. The smaller versions allow us the opportunity to expand more on the information we have available for each host location. Be warned, if you are hoping to pick up previous versions we are unlikely to have any at many of the matches due to the travel logistics of moving them about.
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Free certainly doesn’t mean cheap; we have worked closely with the Football Association’s England Supporters Travel Club (ESTC) on ensuring this information can be provided. As with most things for this World Cup, costs are out of control, so we have worked extremely hard to ensure you have access to the quality of information we are used to supplying whilst operating on a budget.
Whilst the Fans’ Embassy team have visited many of the host-cities lined up at this World Cup to meet with local organisers to share the supporter voice and to gather a lot of the information you will see in this guide, the sheer expanse of this World Cup meant we have partnered with ConnectFC, who have helped provide some extremely valuable second-city information for you.
The information provided is very much by fans, for fans, the best possible kind. We are here for you, and whilst we have a very good relationship with many of the key stakeholders in football, this service is purely confidential and run by regular match going supporters, you can come to us with anything, if we don’t know the answer, by now, we probably know the people that do.
How to use this guide
We refuse to fully leave the dark ages, the individual match Free Lions will still be available in person and printed fresh. However, many of you might be wondering where the printed version of this guide is like before. Being totally straight we you, costs meant it just wasn’t possible, but we have put a lot of time and effort into ensuring the digital version is just as good.
So rather than turn the page, scroll through, click the different links and you’ll hopefully find everything you need. We take no responsibility if you fling your phone/laptop/tablet across the room trying to turn the page.
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