12 August 2023

Tragedy before game

Although the visiting fans had a ban to enter the arena, they have nevertheless travelled to Athens for the Champions league match between AEK and Dinamo Zagreb. Not only they have entered the city, but their hooligans also started a street fight with the home supporters and near the stadium where the statue is also damaged. And the epilogue became really ugly: 1 fan from the home side was stabbed to death, 8 injured and 104 arrested. Because this nasty brawl happened just 24 hours before the duel there was no other option for the European football organization but to completely postpone this pair.
Until today all 104 detained were charged with criminal activities, where out of this number 94 of them are only from Croatia. Local media is reporting that the investigation is narrowed to 13 fans of finding the murder suspect: 9 Croats, 3 Greeks and 1 Albanian. The killer nor the knife used in the stabbing of the 29-year-old AEK fan Michalis Katsouris was not found.
On top of that, resignations were announced at the Greek police. Seven senior police officers stepped down because they allowed the guests to enter into Athens, and in order to evade them, the hooligans have traveled on alternative routes and took different transportation through neighboring countries just to be on the site and participate in this chaos.
Now these two clubs in a space of four nights would determine who will go through to the last elimination hurdle. Automatically Dinamo Zagreb will be hosting the first 90 minutes on 15 August at 20.00, while the cancelled game is going to decide everything four nights later commencing from 20.45 CEt. Both matches have to be played without visiting fans present at stadia.

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