A man has lost his life and eight others have been injured in various clashes between AEK Athens fans and Dinamo Zagreb in the Hellenic capital, a Greek police spokeswoman told EFE on Wednesday.
The violent altercations took place on the night of Monday to Tuesday, on the eve of the qualifying match for the Champions League that the two teams were to play today in Athens. UEFA has suspended the match, as reported by the Greek police.
The fatal victim is a 22-year-old AEK fan, while five Croats and three Greeks remain out of danger in the hospital, the spokeswoman said. According to local media, the fatality was hospitalized after suffering serious injuries from several stab wounds, but doctors were unable to save his life.
In addition, the Police have arrested 98 people, including 92 Croats, an Austrian, a Bosnian, an Albanian, a German and two Greeks.
Although the transfer of Croatian fans to Greece from Croatia had been prohibited, a group of between 100 and 120 Dinamo Zagreb ultras arrived in the Hellenic country on Monday in several private cars.
The Greek media claim that shortly before midnight, about a hundred Croatian team members attacked Greek fans who were in cafeterias in front of AEK’s “Opap Arena” stadium, where they had come to watch the team’s training.
The AEK has lamented the death of its young fan and has called for a strong hand with the culprits: “Michael, the AEK will never forget you! Exemplary punishment for the murderers and those responsible!”, he wrote this Tuesday in a message on his social networks accompanied him a photograph of the fan who lost his life yesterday.
For its part, Dinamo Zagreb said in a statement on Tuesday that it “strongly” condemned the clashes between fans that took place in Athens. “Such events are not in line with the values ??and ethics that we promote as a club and as a community,” the team said in a statement posted on its website.
In videos circulating on social networks you can see how several people with their faces covered begin to attack the fans of the Greek team. The Dinamo Zagreb players, who had also trained at the “Opap Arena”, had to be transferred to their hotel under police escort, according to private television SKAI.
Violence is a frequent feature of soccer matches in Greece and, following the death of a young man last year, the government raised the maximum prison sentence for violent fans from six months to five years.
On the night of February 1, 2022, in Thessaloniki (north), a young fan, Alkis Kampanos, 19, was beaten and stabbed to death after a football match between the city’s two rival clubs, PAOK FC and the Aris FC.
In July, seven of the twelve defendants in this case were found guilty of intentional homicide and sentenced to life imprisonment. The other five received sentences of more than 19 years for complicity. It was the third death in three years due to fan violence in Thessaloniki alone.
