Arsenal and FC Köln fined after their clash last night
Last night, Cologne made their come back to Europe after 25 years. And Arsenal also were making their first appearance in the Europa League after 2 decades.
The Cologne fans made their presence felt all over London. Almost 20,000 Cologne fans had traveled to England to watch their team play for the first time in 25 years in an European competition. We saw them marching through the streets of London.
But to their dismay, Arsenal had only allocated 2900 seats to FC Köln supporters.
Despite warnings, FC Köln fans still flew to London and tried to sneak into the Emirates stadium. They even went to the extent of buying Arsenal shirts so they could sneak into the Home end to see their team play.
The German club fans created havoc in London. We saw fights breaking out between the home and away club fans and also with the stewards and the police.
Here are some videos showing the Cologne hooligans fighting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTdQtC4OYec
and here’s another:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACUhXDMZOFs
After the match, UEFA took disciplinary action against FC Köln and Arsenal.
UEFA have charged Cologne on the following 4 grounds:
- Crowd disturbances
- Setting off fireworks
- Throwing of objects
- Acts of damage
And Arsenal on the following grounds:
- Stairways blocked in away supporters sector
The match was on the verge of being cancelled but it was delayed by one hour due to the chaos caused by the Cologne fans.
Arsenal released the following statement after the match:
“We worked with our colleagues at Cologne to stop supporters travelling without match tickets.
The 3,000 tickets issued to Cologne fans was in line with competition rules but it is clear many more visiting fans arrived, causing significant congestion and disturbance outside the stadium before kick-off. Many tickets were sold through touts and this is very disappointing.”
Wenger also shared his thoughts:
“Do we move it to Tuesday and play Thursday? It was all kind of speculations you know that we had to analyse and see how we can deal with the situation,
But in the end at some stage I thought they would not play the game, because I can’t see the police taking any risk.
We live in a society of 100% security and I thought they would never take a gamble to play this game when I saw the images around the stadium. But I must say our supporters dealt well with the situation as well and there was no aggravation.”
FC Köln coach Peter Stoger said:
“I have no comment about the fans,
I’m the coach, my job is the team, my job is football, not the fans.”
Have to agree with the Peter. But their fans have immense passion.
Reports say around 4 or 5 people have been arrested. And this doesn’t seem to be the end of it.
The case will be heard next Thursday which could point towards action being taken ahead of the return game in Cologne.
In spite of everything happening outside and inside the Emirates, our players still managed to win and they deserve to be praised for this. ')}