“The cancer of football”: Greece closes all organized fan clubs

“Violence and hooliganism are not a Greek problem, they are a European problem,” said UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin during a meeting with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens on Wednesday.

You shouldn’t call these people fans, they are “the cancer of football, they use it for their idiotic ideas”. Mitsotakis announced tightened measures for Greece. All organized fan clubs should be closed. In the future there will only be one official fan club linked to the club, he said. In addition, the powers of the police at the stadiums are to be expanded and controls tightened.

The meeting was also attended by bosses and representatives of the four major Greek clubs Panathinaikos Athens, Olympiacos Piraeus, AEK Athens and PAOK Thessaloniki. Mitsotakis appealed to the clubs to also take responsibility and fight against fan violence. Everyone must be mobilized, and that across Europe, it said in the joint statements.

The perpetrators were exposed

Last week, before the Champions League qualifier between AEK Athens and the Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb, around 150 Croatian hooligans rioted in the Athens suburb of Nea Filadelfia.

During the serious riots, a Greek fan was killed by a stab wound. Around 100 Croatians and fans of other nationalities have been in Greek prisons since then. The first leg in Athens was canceled by UEFA and postponed to August 19.

Mitsotakis assured that those responsible for the fan’s death would be found and punished. The head of government also forbade interference on the part of other states. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic previously accused the Athens authorities of treating Croatian hooligans like prisoners of war. “Greece is a constitutional state, there are laws here, the judiciary is independent,” Mitsotakis clarified.