AThis Thursday evening the police are almost invisible. From time to time, officers stand in small groups in front of the Waldstadion, discreetly positioned along the triangle of tracks and on blocks. This is exactly the tactic the police used in this Conference League game between Eintracht Frankfurt and PAOK Thessaloniki (final result 1:2). Offer no direct pass, no surface to attack. The police know they are enemies in the stadium. And this violence can arise in the radical fan scene at any moment. “We are acting calmly,” Frankfurt Police Chief Stefan Müller said a few days ago. After all, it is this calm that constitutes sovereignty.
Because the excessive brutality that broke out against the police last Saturday during Eintracht’s game against Stuttgart continued in the game against PAOK Thessaloniki. Not only because there had been rioting again among radical fans, but also because since that Saturday night the battle between fans and police had become fiercer than ever before. There is a struggle over the question of who initiated the violence. And although on Saturday evening at 23:26 the police issued a press release with the headline “Significant disturbances before the Eintracht Frankfurt – Stuttgart match – the same evening the police created a special commission”, which spoke of attacks on stewards and rescue workers, Representatives of fan associations are trying to turn the picture into the opposite. They accuse the police of using excessive force.
Source: Frantfurter Allgemeine
I am a sports journalist with over 10 years of experience covering news, events and stories from around the world. I have written for several online news outlets and have also been published in print magazines. I am currently working as an author at the World Herald News, where I cover primarily sports-related stories.
