English football chiefs pressed for the stiffest available sanctions for those involved in a pitch invasion following Birmingham s League Cup win over Aston Villa on Wednesday that threatened to tarnish their bid to stage the 2018 World Cup.
Just a day before delegates from world football governing body FIFA vote in Zurich on both the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts, there was a scene that Birmingham boss Alex McLeish said was a return to the Dark Ages of the 1980s when English football was synonymous with fan violence.
It was a further public relations problem for England bid bosses after the fall-out from a BBC television Panorama programme broadcast Monday that made allegations of corruption within FIFA.
Police and stewards could not stop some thousand fans po…