OM receives the Germans from Frankfurt in the Champions League, while the Breton club receives Fenerbahce in the Europa League on Thursday.
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The chaos scenes observed at the Allianz-Riviera in Nice during the reception of Cologne (1-1) in the Europa League Conference on Thursday brought back bad memories: brawls between fans inside the stadium, which also involved former Parisian ultras, throwing smoke bombs, damage in the city center… These incidents resulted in 32 injuries.
Hence the concern over the idea of welcoming foreign fans back to the Champions League and Europa League, in particular those of Eintracht Frankfurt, traveling to Marseille on Tuesday (21:00).
“It seems just as complicated” at the Vélodrome, acknowledged Ronan Evain, general manager of the Football Supporters Europe network, who deplores the lack of anticipation on the part of the authorities and clubs in preparing for these risky away matches, as in Nice last Thursday. .
“This is not about cleaning up the people who have decided to cross the red line. The problem is that we have infrastructures and a safety culture that are failing and are only adding to this risk, ”she says.
“We are not at peace”
For the Marseille-Frankfurt, the prefecture of police says for its part to provide a “reinforced safety device”. If he does not communicate the numbers, he assures AFP that he has planned “a little more than usual”.
Several CRS units should have been deployed, from Monday, around the Vélodrome stadium but also in the city of Marseille. There will be three permanent units (counting 80 policemen each) assigned to Marseille, “plus others”, indicated the prefecture.
According to the authorities, Eintracht plans to bring 3,300 fans with tickets and up to 5,000 other people without titles to the stadium. The German club, for its part, evokes 2,000 ticketless fans and considers the previously mentioned figure of 15,000 ticketless fans to be “imaginative”.
However, a decree bans Frankfurt fans who perform as such from parking or driving near the Velodrome on Tuesday, “except for those transported by coaches and buses escorted by internal security forces.” In the city center of Marseille, German fans will have to stay low on Monday.
The sale of take-away alcoholic beverages will also be prohibited from 2:00 pm on Tuesdays, in the villages of the city center.
And to avoid friction between the fans inside the Velodrome, OM plans to block some seats on the side of the Jean-Bouin stand near the visitor parking to try to create a kind of buffer zone. Not possible on the other side of the car park (north bend).
“We are not calm, we will not lie. We want to do everything we can to prevent things from going wrong, ”says a source within OM.
Night fight
There was talk of the fans of Frankfurt in May in Seville, during the Europa League final won against Glasgow Rangers, with a night fight between the ultras of the two clubs the day before the game. The club has also been threatened with a closed-door disciplinary session since the pitch invasion following the C3 semi-final against West Ham.
On the Marseille side, the last two European games at Vélodrome, last season against PAOK Thessaloniki and then Feyenoord Rotterdam in the Europa League Conference, had also been marked by accidents …
In Rennes, where the fiery Turkish Fenerbahçe fans are expected on Thursday (21), and in Munich, where the Hungarian Ferencvaros fans, some of them linked to the hooligan movement, will travel on the same day (6.45pm). ), vigilance will also be required.
As for the people of Nice, traveling to Belgrade on Thursday (21:00) to face Partizan in the Europa League Conference, they move in a climate that promises to be hot, despite the partial closure of the Serbian stadium for disciplinary reasons.
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