VfB Stuttgart had to make do without their hard core supporters in the Europa League on Thursday. After an incident with local security forces, the active fan scene boycotted the game against the Go Ahead Eagles (4:0).
As VfB Stuttgart confirmed in the evening, some VfB fans were banned from entering the city of Deventer before the European Cup game.
Specifically, it was about the occupants of three fan buses who had made the long journey to the Netherlands on Thursday. The reason given by the local authorities for the exclusion was that the guests from Stuttgart had behaved aggressively towards the police at the meeting point in Deventer.
According to the club, other VfB fans who were not affected by the measure also started their journey home out of solidarity.
CEO Alexander Wehrle criticized the measure as completely excessive. The club boss said he was “shocked” by the “completely disproportionate” actions of the police RTL. “I’ve never experienced anything like this before.” They won’t put up with that. They immediately complained to UEFA.
VfB Stuttgart is currently not an isolated case
“What really shocks me is when you get off a bus in Europe today and are greeted with a stick in the neck,” complained VfB boss Wehrle at halftime in the game RTL. “Where are we then?”
Video: “Beaten with a stick”: VfB boss pissed off!
In addition to the chairman of the board, members of the executive committee from Stuttgart also mingled with the fans on Thursday. It was said that no one in the delegation noticed any aggressive behavior on the part of the supporters.
The director of the Go Ahead Eagles, Jan Willem van Dop, said that the police operation came about because there were fans on the buses without tickets, the newspaper De Stentor reported. However, people without tickets should not come to the stadium. “Rules are rules and that is handled well here,” he said.
Out of concern about riots, the mayor of Deventer, Ron König, had already issued a ban on Stuttgart fans entering the city center in the afternoon. The reason is that, according to information from the police, there is a risk of serious disruption to public safety.
“Our starting point is that we want to organize the Europa League games in Deventer in a hospitable, comfortable and safe way,” explained the mayor. “But now it turns out that some people have completely different ideas about it.”
The exclusion of visiting fans from international games has recently become a sad norm. In the Champions League, Eintracht Frankfurt recently had to play the game in Naples without a team. In England, authorities in Birmingham banned the visitors from Tel Aviv from the game against Aston Villa.