Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has promised a “zero tolerance, ruthless” approach to hooliganism at tonight’s UEFA Conference League football final between Chelsea and Real Betis in the Polish city of Wrocław, following clashes between British and Spanish fans.
Yesterday evening, at around 7:30 p.m., groups of rival fans began throwing chairs and bottles at one another outside bars on one of Wrocław’s historic market squares.
“The English fans didn’t like the fact that the Spanish fans were sitting in an Irish pub, which means they sympathise with the Irish,” Tomasz Sikora, a spokesman for Wrocław city hall, told Polsat News. “That’s where the whole issue came from.”
“The police reacted immediately, which prevented further escalation of the conflict,” added Łukasz Dutkowiak, a spokesman for the local police. “The fans scattered in different directions and activities aimed at identifying them are still ongoing.”
Another clash then broke out around 11 p.m. involving around ten people. “A 31-year-old Spanish citizen, who was the most aggressive [among them], was detained,” while other participants ran away, said Dutkowiak, quoted by broadcaster TVN.
Separately, three other people from Spain were arrested for dismantling Conference League final flags. Sikora said that, in total, police made 515 interventions on Tuesday, the kind of level normally seen on New Year’s Eve.
Monika Kaleta, a spokeswoman for local police, told Eurosport that they are “expecting a possible escalation of clashes” today around the final, which begins at 9 p.m. local time in Wrocław’s 43,000-capacity Tarczyński Arena.
Around 2,000 police officers have been deployed to the city for the final, including many drafted in from other parts of Poland. Local newspaper Gazeta Wrocławska, however, notes that most of the thousands of fans who have come to Wrocław for the match are behaving peacefully.
In a statement issued on social media on Wednesday afternoon, Tusk “thanked the police for their decisive actions against the hooligans in Chelsea and Betis shirts in Wrocław”.
“Zero tolerance for violence on our streets!” he added. “We warn you: if necessary, the police will be even more ruthless today!”
“The English fans didn’t like the fact that the Spanish fans were sitting in an Irish pub, which means they sympathise with the Irish,” Tomasz Sikora, a spokesman for Wrocław city hall, told Polsat News. “That’s where the whole issue came from.”
Why do settler colonialists always have the most fragile ego?
This is a tribal, not a colonial thing. Primitive behaviour. There are definitely parallels and, I grant you, there’s bound to be a lot of crossover.
Sports are a substitute for tribal warfare and for some people, those not smart enough to not give in to base instincts, it becomes all-consuming and they feel the need to participate in the warfare.
Sounds like an excuse? Nah. Polish PM should lock the perpetrators up for a few months, and they should get a few more when they come home as well.
British attacking Spanish people for sitting at an Irish Pub in Poland is definitely a result of Britain’s colonial endeavors and remaining settler occupation of parts of Ireland.
There are Irish pubs in Britain too. The more authentic ones are run by actual Irish people. The important bit, I think, is that they’re almost identical to British pubs.
To my mind, it’s more likely that the English fans went looking for something familiar, saw the Irish pub and thought that’d be a great place to have a beer. Then they found it full of Spanish fans.
Now at that point you could argue that “Ireland is our house not yours” is a colonial mindset, and yes you could trace it all back to that, but the apes who went apeshit aren’t smart enough to join all those dots.
They were just pissed off that a rival group of fans had beat them to it.
