Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced this week that all fan groups of football clubs would be shut down after a Greek football fan was stabbed to death in Athens earlier this month in connection with a football game.
Mitsotakis met with UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin as well as the owners of four of Greece’s major football clubs, PAOK, Olympiakos, Panathinaikos, and AEK, before announcing the closure of the fan groups, Ekathimerini reports.
“The fan clubs will close. Every team will have only one, housed at the team’s headquarters,” the Greek Prime Minister said and noted that police would now be attending matches and would have the ability to check and search members of organised fan groups.
He went on to state that he felt it was unlikely he would have to sanction Greek clubs and prevent them from competing in European competitions but did say there was a possibility of denying organised fans entry to matches if violent acts do not decrease.
Security cameras were also mentioned during the talks with the football club owners who are expected to install integrated camera systems.
The Greeks are also moving to cooperate with UEFA and other European countries to combat football violence, noting that issues with violence have been seen across Europe at football events.
The stabbing of 29-year-old Greek fan Michalis Katsouris earlier this month outside of the AEK stadium in Athens also had an international element as those responsible for the man’s killing are believed to be Croatian fans of the team Dinamo Zagreb, which was set to play AEK prior to the murder. The Champions League qualifying match was postponed and will be played Saturday, August 19th.
Following the killing, over a hundred people were arrested by Greek police—102 of them Croatian nationals—and have been indicted on assault charges along with charges of use and possession of explosives.
The death of the 29-year-old took place in a larger brawl that saw ten injured overall, four of whom were beaten so badly with iron bars and bats that they were hospitalised.
The incident led to harsh words from AEK toward Dinamo Zagreb, with the Greek team calling for their Croatian counterparts to be severely punished by UEFA.
“The question that torments our fans is one that we described from the outset and that also torments us: How is it possible that following the brutal murder of Michalis by a gang of vicious criminals from Croatia, for AEK Athens to enter the field and play against this team?” the team said and questioned if any of his killers would attend the match.
Greek police later identified some of the Croatian hooligans arrested as belonging to the “Bad Blue Boys” a fan club associated with hooliganism and violence.
The Bad Blue Boys have also been associated with far-right symbolism, with 14 alleged members being convicted in Austria for giving Nazi salutes in 2018.
The problem of violence in football has been observed for decades. In countries like the United Kingdom, it used to be a common sight at matches as the country became internationally known for hooliganism.
In one scene of violence in 1985 at the European Cup final in Brussels’ Heysel Stadium between Liverpool and Italian club Juventus, 39 fans died after part of the stadium wall collapsed due to mobs of fans from each side fighting, one of the worst hooligan-related disasters in the history of the sport in Europe.
The incident led to then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreeing with a UEFA move to ban all English clubs from competing in Europe for five years, calling for hooliganism to be “cleaned up.”
In the years that followed, measures were put in place to clamp down on hooliganism and much of the violence dissipated, though violent brawls have occasionally occurred, including a 70-man brawl near Newcastle in 2000 that left one man brain-damaged and many injured, and was described by the BBC as some of the worst hooligan violence seen in the UK.
Last year, however, the UK football policing unit (UKFPU) noted that arrests at matches were increasing from pre-pandemic levels.
