Addressing Fan Violence in Swiss Football: Interview with Claudius Schäfer, CEO of the Swiss Football League

An interview

Chaotic people are affecting Swiss football with their violence. How should we deal with the problem? Claudius Schäfer, CEO of the Swiss Football League, stands.

Valentin Oetterli, Patrick Lerch / Keystone-SDA

Claudius Schäfer, we finally have it the bad events after the cup match between Winterthur and Servette familiar What do you think?
This makes me very angry.

Do you see ways and solutions that can be used to combat fan violence if you could decide for yourself?
It is a very complicated subject. When you talk about fan violence, of course they are not fans, they are chaotic people. We must try to keep these slobs away from football. There are ways to do this, but the road ahead is rocky.

In what way?
At the beginning is identity. If we want to get rid of the slobs, we need to identify them. Once we have identified them, we can act on them. That means a stadium ban or a rayon ban or a reporting requirement. And above all, they can be brought to justice. We don’t need to hide ourselves and believe that violence will be eliminated one hundred percent. The past shows us this, other countries also show us this, and other events outside football also show us this – as recently in Bern, when eleven police officers were injured. Unfortunately, violence is part of our society. And unfortunately it is also part of football. Fortunately, it is used by a small minority. But this minority gets a lot of attention and has a negative impact on what should be the focus: football.

In the end, the non-violent fans will suffer when sectors are blocked using the cascade model and ghost games may be introduced later. .
Blocking sectors is, in a way, a sign of incompetence. The steps in the cascade model, which affect many innocent followers, are not effective. You are just making people angry. Instead, we must work to catch the individual perpetrators. I specifically asked a member of the authority what he expected from the closure of the departments. The answer was that society now expects something to be done. However, the past has taught us that you should only use steps that lead to a goal. Measures for the gallery never achieved anything and were even counterproductive.

How is the problem being dealt with in other countries?
Two weeks ago, as Vice-President of the European Leagues, I was at a meeting with colleagues from other countries in London. Security is a big issue in almost every league. It is a social phenomenon that football sometimes attracts violent criminals. Not only in Switzerland, but everywhere. I presented the cascade model and asked for the opinions of representatives from other leagues.

How did your colleagues respond?
The model has been met with serious misunderstanding, particularly the way in which sanctions are applied inside stadiums after incidents outside the stadium. In addition, our clubs already pay a large part of the costs for security outside the stadiums. It is up to eighty percent. The representatives of Belgium and Denmark told me that it was completely inconceivable to them that the clubs had to pay for these costs, in principle for the costs of the police. In our country, however, football already has to contribute significantly to public land costs. This is often forgotten.

Do you see approaches or even solutions in comparable leagues like in Belgium or Denmark?
In Scandinavia, communication is very much maintained, as we do within the framework of the newly introduced stadium alliances. What I hear there is that there is a very strong separation between the stadium and the outfield. Outside the stadium, responsibility is clearly with the authorities, inside the stadium with the club.

All in white like Hansi Hinterseer: FC Copenhagen fans.Photo: keystone

So in other countries there is a clear separation.
In Denmark, the authorities and the police do not want the clubs to contribute to security costs outside the stadium. This is what the Danish representative in London told me. Otherwise, the clubs would like to have a say in the police presence and operational conditions. We are far from this practice. Here everything is much more mixed – but the clubs still have no say in the arrangements outside the stadiums.

This means that the police in Denmark are independent and decide for themselves how they want to ensure security. And she also pays for it herself.
That’s how it is. In England they had more problems last season, for example by blocking the pitch and throwing things at players. The Premier League’s head of security gave a presentation on this. In England, the reporting requirement is a very important tool. Anyone caught can no longer attend games. It is a tool that I have been advocating for since the reporting requirement was introduced. But unfortunately it is implemented very little here. I hear from colleagues abroad that the most effective measures are those that affect the person who committed the crime. That’s what we keep moving in Switzerland.

Are personalized tickets a problem?
A year ago, we at the Swiss Football League prepared a detailed report on this subject together with the conference of cantonal justice and police leaders. We carefully weighed the pros and cons and came to the conclusion that personalized tickets do not solve our challenges, which arise especially outside the stadiums, and therefore do not they are a targeted and effective solution.

Are there any solutions in sight in Switzerland?
The world is moving quickly and we need to keep a close eye on how the technical capabilities develop, for example in facial recognition. For such methods to be used, legal questions had to be clarified and data protection had to change. This is given with a very high emphasis in Switzerland. (ram/sda)

There is currently a standoff between the federal government and the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation. The background information is a Dispute over the use of the Swiss coat of arms on the “Eisgenossen” jersey. The national ice hockey team has used this ice at previous world championships without federal approval. The current law has been in place since 2017. The Federal Administrative Court is now dealing with the case.