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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Football’s tactical shift
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Football’s tactical shift

What it takes to maintain peace on a week of high-octane matches across Europe

Juventus’ players celebrate after winning the Uefa Champions League quarter-final against AS Monaco on Tuesday. Photo: Olivier Morin/afpPremium
Juventus’ players celebrate after winning the Uefa Champions League quarter-final against AS Monaco on Tuesday. Photo: Olivier Morin/afp

OTHERS :

Barcelona: Lluis Miquel Venteo Fernandez is a long-time Barcelona fan, so he had a specific opponent in mind for his beloved soccer team when the matchups were announced for this week’s Champions League quarter-finals. “I want Monaco," he says. Monaco, from the top French league, is one of the weaker clubs remaining in the tournament. But quality on the field (or lack thereof) was not Venteo’s primary motivation. “Monaco would be perfect," he continues, “because they have no supporters."

While many soccer fans salivate over the midweek clashes of the best teams in Europe, those like Venteo, who oversees sports-related security in Barcelona, Spain, have a different rooting interest. Venteo wants games against teams like Monaco, which have a largely diffident, if not invisible, fan base. Venteo ended up with a difficult draw—both for him and his team—as Barcelona were paired with Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).

With the Champions League in full swing throughout Europe this week, the focus on security will be even greater than usual. Michel Platini, the president of European soccer’s governing body, Uefa, has called for a continent-wide police force focused specifically on sports. It would ostensibly help avoid conflicts like the one in February in Rome, Italy, where fans of Feyenoord, a Dutch club, battled with the police and were said to have damaged the Barcaccia, a boat-shaped fountain at the foot of the Spanish Steps. Recently, in Paris, France, some Chelsea fans visiting from London, UK, refused to allow a black man to board their subway car and were captured on video chanting with pride about being racist.

Sometimes the clash of cultures can be more violent. A Tottenham fan was stabbed before a Europa League game in Italy in 2012, and Borussia Dortmund fans were attacked by Galatasaray supporters in the streets of Istanbul, Turkey, before their teams’ Champions League match last year.

But through increased cooperation and preparedness, soccer has avoided large-scale policing calamities like the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster in Brussels, Belgium, in which 39 people died after a wall collapsed during fighting between Liverpool and Juventus supporters at the European Cup final. “The evolution of the supporter business has changed," Jean-François Martins, Paris’ deputy mayor for sports and tourism, said in an interview at his office. “Across Europe, hooligans, the way people think of them years ago, are gone. But that does not mean there are not still problems."

Big matches between clubs from different countries—and with fans from different cultures—remain a potential source of violence, so security officials planning for a European match focus on two distinct prongs: the experience in and around the stadium, and the contact that visiting fans will have with locals. Preparation is critical. John O’Hare, who oversees soccer security in Manchester, England, says he communicates with his counterparts in other countries to identify fans who have, say, been arrested for violence in their home countries and might try to travel to an away match. O’Hare says he keeps detailed files and shares them with other officers when Manchester United or Manchester City are playing abroad.

Many police forces, particularly in Western Europe, have attempted to reduce tensions between fans and law enforcement by taking a proactive approach. While some cities have stuck to the older philosophy of using loads of officers carrying lots of weapons, a more peaceful strategy is growing in popularity. Instead of using “batons and barking dogs" to keep the peace, O’Hare says, the goal is to shepherd visiting fans to a particular area of the city and then help accompany the fans to the stadium as well.

The most dangerous factions of fans, security officials say, are generally the splinter groups that support a particular team. Many of these groups have political affiliations or ideologies, which can make their interactions more combustible. “It isn’t just size, either," says Venteo, the Barcelona officer. “Sometimes a small group can be more dangerous than a big one. Five hundred fans from CSKA Moscow would be harder to deal with than 1,000 fans from Monte Carlo." Venteo says he will be on alert for any politically motivated battles when PSG and Barcelona play the second leg in Spain on 21 April. The last time the teams played, he says, a group of right-wing PSG supporters bizarrely collaborated with a right-wing Barcelona group to fight a left-wing Barcelona group. “We heard about it on the Internet and were able to stop it," he says. “Barely."

©2015/The New York Times

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Published: 15 Apr 2015, 08:14 PM IST
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