(Sorry for the long post, but there's so much just absolute false and/or illogical stuff going out there right now and it's just such a ridiculously clear situation that people - especially RS supporters - are trying to muddy the waters on.)
It's very similar to the Goodison headlock situation, in that there were at least 30,000 cameras in the building, almost all of which can record video in 4K, and yet nobody has a single video of any Uruguayan family member being attacked, other than those Uruguayan family members who were main instigators in this (Araujo's uncle is now getting hero treatment in Uruguayan social media, and he was one of the main instigators of at least one of the flare-ups). The only things anybody has shown as proof of the things to happen to the family members are:
- Uruguay's captain said in the interview that Colombian fans rushed the Uruguayan families. Nothing whatsoever he said has been supported by any evidence, as there were no rushes until fights broke out, the fighting was provably started by Uruguayans, and there aren't any family members caught in the fighting on the very clear videos. What most likely happened is that as the fights moved about, people trying to get away from them may have bumped into some family members, which is definitely scary but definitely not "Those violent Colombians were trying to attack my family."
- A player's wife and child either got caught or had a near miss by a thrown drink (I'm not totally clear on it with the videos I've seen). The thing is, nobody has shown on video who exactly threw that drink, but there are clear videos of Uruguayan federation higher ups throwing drinks directly at Colombian fans before this, and Uruguayan player Bentancur even injured his own trainer by throwing a bottle.
- Apparently the mother of a player fainted. That's bad and all, and surely wouldn't have happened without the stress of the situation, but there is a massive gap between that and "got attacked."
- An Uruguayan player is on video saying "leave the families be!" It literally shows nobody going after any wives, elder parents, nor children.
- Darwin Nuñez crying on the pitch holding his child. Again, proves nothing other than him being upset, and in the video itself you can see at the end his wife/partner appears directly upset with him. In the earlier video where he goes into the crowd, she seems to be telling him not to.
A couple more videos bubbled up this morning, and the picture is just incredibly obvious at this point that what happened was:
- The game finished, at which point Colombians started celebrating (they hadn't made the final in a while, after all). This included throwing drinks in the air, which resulted in a spray of beer and other drinks all over everybody.
- Uruguayan players on the pitch got angry with Colombian players and staff for celebrating, and tried starting to fight them, including Luis Suarez attempting to bite a Colombian player.
- Uruguayan fans, including potentially some family members, got angry and aggressive at Colombian fans who were celebrating and probably doing a bit of taunting. Some of those Uruguayan fans, including some rather old men, started attacking Colombian fans.
- The initial fight moved over to another section, resulting in people trying to get away from it, colliding with each other, basically what you would expect in that situation. At this point, a few more people jumped in.
- When the fighting seemed like it might settle down a bit, more Uruguayan aggressors would show up and go on the attack. You can literally see every Colombian fan in certain moments going "calm down" then some Uruguayans come running in. After a wave of this, all family members who were wives, children, or just not interested in fighting had gone down to the rail at the first row (the fighting was probably 8-12 rows up).
- After Darwin Nuñez speaks with (I believe) his significant other, who is nowhere particularly near the fighting and may have told him not to go in, Nuñez climbs the railing, runs into the scrum and starts swinging at every Colombian he sees. At this point he receives a blow to the head. Multiple other Uruguayan players, including their captain, join him. Note that he has left the people he is supposedly defending, who are already safe. His entire motivation had to have been to extract some kind of vengeance, because where he was, there was nobody to defend.
- After this wave, Nuñez goes back on to the pitch, where he grabs a folding chair and attempts to throw it at a completely different section of Colombian supporters (as in, even if the families were attacked, these people would have had absolutely nothing to do with it), but somebody puts him off his throwing motion then another person pulls him away.
- Finally it calms down.
Additionally, there have been some reports of people in the Uruguayan media team who were seated in that section and were removed during the game for being abusive towards Colombians in some way.
I've said it on the Copa America thread: I usually am totally fine with Uruguay as a team, and I love the country, but they were clearly the party at fault in this case, and if the fault is shared it's no more than maybe 10 percent a small group of Colombian fans and all the rest on the Uruguayan contingent at all levels. This is worse than Cantona, and it was not just one or two players. The sanction for this should set records, but it almost surely will not.
