What to do about the Problem Fans?

What side of the fence are you on?

Con­se­quences after the Riots in Ham­burg: DFB Pres­i­dent Zwanziger is con­sid­er­ing Travel Bans on Fans, Ros­tock is not rul­ing out Court Actions against the insti­ga­tors. The Police Union is warn­ing that there may be fatal­i­ties soon and is demand­ing games in empty stadiums.

Ham­burg – The phys­i­cal dam­age caused in the Riots sur­round­ing the 2nd Divi­sion game between FC St. Pauli and Hansa Ros­tock (3:2) from last Fri­day has already dis­ap­peared, but the psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age done to Ger­man Soc­cer will remain for some time. DFB Pres­i­dent Theo Zwanziger is con­sid­er­ing a gen­eral Travel Ban on Prob­lem fans. He said to “Bild am Son­ntag”: “If it helps, then we have to do it.” The Gew­erkschaft der Polizei (GdP = Police Union) went even fur­ther. GdP Chair­man Kon­rad Freiberg said after the Street fight­ing in Ham­burg about Matches with­out Spec­ta­tors: “As extreme as it sounds it has to remain a pos­si­bil­ity, with the increase of vio­lent activ­i­ties sur­round­ing Soc­cer recently, it is just a mat­ter of time before we see fatalities.”

The DFB is going to dis­cuss the inci­dents in Ham­burg later this week, Hansa Ros­tock how­ever is not wait­ing and has already issued the first con­se­quences: Four peo­ple have already received a three year Sta­dium ban for all of Ger­many, and the Club has reserved the right that if it receives a Fine from the DFB that it will take the guilty indi­vid­u­als to court to recoup dam­ages. Accord­ing to Rostock’s Board Chair­man Dirk Grabow the actions of some of the Fans were “absolutely unac­cept­able”. As a “Repeat Offender”, the Club could see seri­ous sanc­tions from the DFB, to include play­ing in an empty Sta­dium. St. Pauli is also look­ing at a min­i­mum of a mon­e­tary fine, after approx­i­mately 1000 St. Pauli Fans and other indi­vid­u­als par­tic­i­pated in the Street Fight­ing with the Police. Five Offi­cers, two Fans and a bystander were injured.

The inci­dent has started the dis­cus­sions about how to pre­vent Fan Vio­lence once again. The Police think that a Travel Ban is a viable option. “It makes sense not to let Vio­lent Fans travel to the matches” said GdP Chair­man Freiberg. The Police tried a lim­ited ver­sion of this ahead of the match by enact­ing Sta­dium Bans on 11 Ros­tock Group Lead­ers and 5 St. Pauli Fans. The Koor­di­na­tion­sstelle Fan­pro­jekt (Kos = Coor­di­na­tion office for Fan Project) how­ever stated that a Travel Ban “would not do any­thing” accord­ing to the Frank­furt Kos Leader Michael Gabriel. Gabriel acknowl­edged that there has been “an increase of vio­lent inci­dents in Soc­cer” but added “It is def­i­nitely not only an East Ger­man Prob­lem.” Another item brought into the dis­cus­sion has been crit­i­cism of the DFL for set­ting the date of the match. In the future the risk matches should be sched­uled on “an unat­trac­tive travel day” accord­ing to Hamburg’s Police Spokesman Ralf Meyer – for exam­ple Sun­day or Mon­day. He added “Fri­day Evening is to much an attrac­tive day to have a match like this.” The Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL = Ger­man Soc­cer League) coor­di­nates the selec­tion of the match days for the 2nd Divi­sion with the Zen­tralen Infor­ma­tion­sstelle Sportein­sätze (Zis = Cen­tral Infor­ma­tion Office for Sport­ing Events) of the Police in Düs­sel­dorf. “We coor­di­nate all sched­ul­ing for matches with the Zis and did it in this case as well” said DFL Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Hol­ger Hieronymus.

The DFB Safety Coor­di­na­tor Hel­mut Spahn sat down for an Inter­view where he gives his opin­ion on the state­ments by the Police Union (GdP)

Q: There has been quite the dis­cus­sion after the inci­dents sur­round­ing the St. Pauli vs. Ros­tock match. How do you view the Coor­di­na­tion with the Police before the game espe­cially in regards to the date of the match?

Hel­mut Spahn: There was almost noth­ing that could be improved upon. The Coor­di­na­tion between the teams and the Police was at a per­fect level, and that includes the date picked for the match. Con­trary to the cur­rent crit­i­cism, the Zen­trale Infor­ma­tion­sstelle für Sportein­sätze (ZIS) not only con­curred with the date cho­sen but rec­om­mended Fri­day or Mon­day to the DFL for this match.

Q: Once again there is a demand that games should be played behind closed doors. As Secu­rity Coor­di­na­tor for the DFB, what is your posi­tion on that?

Spahn: We have to make that a pos­si­bil­ity, but only as a mat­ter of last resort. You have to remem­ber that the prob­lems do not entirely go away if the match is played with­out spec­ta­tors, most of the alter­ca­tions hap­pen out­side the Sta­dium instead of in the Sta­dium. The Fans of the Home Team are already in their City and the Away Fans could still come to town. In this case, var­i­ous observers reported to me that after the game the fight­ing was mainly with Left Autonomous indi­vid­u­als and the Police and the fight­ing before the game was with Ros­tock Sup­port­ers and the Police. So we have to see if it would even make sense to exclude the Pub­lic if the result­ing stretch­ing of resources for the Police would increase the dan­ger to both the Pub­lic and the Police forces.

Q: What pos­si­bil­i­ties are there to pre­vent this sort of thing for future Risk Matches ahead of time? For exam­ple, is it legal to tell known Prob­lem Fans they can­not travel?

Spahn: That is already being attempted. For this to really work the Police laws and reg­u­la­tions have to be the same and applied uni­formly, cur­rently each State has dif­fer­ent rules and pro­ce­dures. Some­thing like this can only be suc­cess­ful if all the par­tic­i­pants coor­di­nate effectively.

Q: What is your view on the gen­eral devel­op­ments of Vio­lence in the Sta­di­ums? Is there any truth to the com­ments that there is an increase in inci­dents to include the 2nd and 3rd Divisions?

Spahn: The state­ments that say the move­ment to vio­lence is increas­ing in the lower Divi­sions are false. Our data alone indi­cates that is not cor­rect. I hon­estly view these com­ments as hav­ing a Stammtis­chniveau (lit­er­ally trans­lates to Stammtisch = a reserved table usu­ally found in bars, Niveau = French word mean­ing level, prac­ti­cal usage in Eng­lish would approx­i­mate hearsay with­out facts). The num­bers indi­cate the oppo­site of that.

Q: The GdP is depict­ing Hor­ror Sce­nar­ios that these inci­dents will only grow in num­ber and size. Do you share these concerns?

Spahn: I am con­cerned how some of these inci­dents are mov­ing out­side the Sta­dium grounds. We are only respon­si­ble for the safety and smooth oper­a­tions inside the Sta­di­ums. The prob­lem that we had on Fri­day was the use of Pyrotech­nics in the Sta­dium. Our strong pro­hi­bi­tions in that regard gov­ern from the Bun­desliga down to the 4th Division.

Q: How do you respond to the demand that the Clubs must improve their work with the Fans? What are the DFB and the DFL doing in that regard?

Spahn: That demand is hard to top in its polemic! Every Club from the Bun­desliga to the 4th Divi­sion has a Fan Coor­di­na­tor, and there are an addi­tional 44 Fan­pro­jekte doing social edu­ca­tion with Fans. There is not much to improve there. The DFB and the DFL is con­tribut­ing over two Mil­lion Euro’s for a third of the total cost, the rest of the money is con­tributed from the Ger­man States and Communities.

Q: What is your response to the state­ment made by the Chair­man of the GdP, Kon­rad Freiberg that it is just a mat­ter of time before we see fatal­i­ties around Soc­cer matches?

Spahn: I don’t want to call it men­tal arson, but it is not far removed from that. These com­ments are not to be taken seri­ous. All we can reit­er­ate is: We don’t want to talk away prob­lems, but we can only solve prob­lems when Pol­i­tics and Sports in this case the Police and Soc­cer, work together to solve them instead of try­ing to blame each other. If the GdP wants to go into a dif­fer­ent direc­tion they might find them­selves iso­lated in a Cul de sac.

I really had hoped to get into some­thing a bit more upbeat involv­ing Fan activ­i­ties after the last few weeks have seen more neg­a­tive things than pos­i­tive ones, but these inci­dents can­not be ignored espe­cially if they may lead to changes in the way the Fans are treated. The sad truth is that the actions of a few extrem­ists are going to impact every­one and the Fans have to step up and police themselves.