On the sidelines of the eighth return, German supporters violently faced the police in the Italian city. Critics focus on the Minister of the Interior.
by Olivier Bonnel (Rome, Correspondence)
Smokes launched on the police, bar chairs or flying trash cans across the streets … Naples knew, Wednesday, March 15, afternoon, scenes of incredible violence. Around 5 p.m., in the historic center, a few hundred ultra supporters from the Eintracht Frankfurt clashed with the ribbing police, a few hours before the round of 16 Champions League. The numerous videos shared on social networks have shown the support of supporters in the face of police officers who seemed to be overwhelmed, and residents in panic in front of this access to violence. Several buses in the city have been ransacked, a burned police car.
On Twitter, the mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi, denounced “an unacceptable guerrilla climate”, while calling for Neapolitan supporters to “be responsible”, in reference to 250 Neapolitans who came to do battle with the Germans. After two chaotic hours, the public force regained control of the situation. Frankfurt supporters were taken to a town in the city completed by the police.
The explosion of violence in the Neapolitan streets is as close to the passive of the two clubs as well as a succession of errors from the Italian authorities. Naples and Frankfurt for several years have been a tenacious hatred for several years, through ultra clubs. Everything is a question of twinning. In 1999, Frankfurt came closer to the tifosi of Atalanta Bergame, one of the historic rivals of Napoli. The latter has created a friendship group between his supporters and those of Borussia Dortmund, himself a sworn enemy of Frankfurt in the German championship. 2> “A serious and unacceptable interference”
On February 21, during the first leg in Germany, the ultras of the Eintracht Frankfurt had lined the city with insulting stickers the Neapolitans and minibus from Italy had been vandalized. Thirty-six people were then arrested.
The Italian authorities had not minimized the risk of clashes, but a succession of orders and counter-orders in recent weeks have created a confusion conducive to overflows. In anticipation of the Wednesday evening match at the Diego-Armando-Maradona stadium in Naples, deemed “at high risk” by the analysis committee for the safety of sports demonstrations (CAMS, body created in 2008 and dependent on the Ministry of the Interior ), the Italian interior minister, Matteo Pierdosi (himself a Neapolitan origin), had first taken an order ordering to close the stadium to visitors and to prohibit the sale of tickets to the supporters of Frankfurt. A measure which then arouses anger in Germany, far beyond the club. On March 8, an insulting banner Pierdosi was thus deployed in Munich during the match against Paris-Saint-Germain.
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