Polish supporters light flares during a friendly football match between Spain and Poland at the Nueva Condomina stadium in Murcia, Spain on June 8, 2010. (Jose Jordan/AFP/Getty Images)
WARSAW, Poland — A year before Poland co-hosts one of the highest-profile sporting events in the world — the quadrennial European soccer championship — national and international authorities are worried violence could interrupt the tournament.
In what many fear is a taste of what could happen during Euro 2012, hundreds of Polish fans recently went on a rampage in Kaunas, Lithuania, following a friendly match between the two countries’ national teams. Footage of hooligans engaged in running battles with the police were broadcast around the world.
“This is a huge image problem for Poland,” said Martin Kallen with UEFA, the European soccer body and the tournament organizer, adding that hooligans are present at every match in Poland.
Street fights are just one in a laundry list of illegal activity connected to Polish fans.
The stands of the country’s soccer stadiums have long been dominated by beefy men hurling insults at opposing fans and even at their own teams. The authorities have clamped down on violence in the stadiums in the past, with the effect that fans have taken their fights into forests, where they stage pre-arranged fights with rivals.
Read more at http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/poland/110502/poland-euro-2012-hooligans
1 comment
Ival
Jun 4, 2011
Walking in the presence of giants here. Cool thinking all arnoud!