Anderlecht manager apologises to West Ham after unsavoury fan scenes
West Ham safely secured their passage into the Europa Conference League knockout rounds against Anderlecht but the game was overshadowed.
A series of very unsavoury incidents in the crowd at the London Stadium saw seats thrown and flares tossed between the travelling support in the upper tier and Irons fans below them.
Further allegations were made of coins being aimed at home supporters from the Belgian contingent as they clashed with the police inside the stadium.
Anderlecht manager Felice Mazzu was furious with his own fans’ behaviour during the game and went as far as to publicly apologise to West Ham on behalf of the football club.
“We want to apologise to West Ham,” he said, as quoted by the Evening Standard. “We don’t tolerate this and strongly condemn this behaviour. We will take it up with Uefa and our own fans.”
Ban them
It seems like there is some kind of horrid fan incident every single week in football and this is the time now when UEFA and FIFA have to take drastic action to prevent from it getting out of hand.
Anderlecht are not necessarily a club you would associate with thug-like supporters in the same way you would either of the big Belgrade sides or any other major Eastern European side.
That makes this incident even more shocking and should send a huge warning sign to the governing bodies that something needs to be done before more serious injuries or even deaths happen one day.
It’s a credit to the West Ham fans being targeted that they did not retaliate with their attack and remained calm to stop the situation from getting even further out of hand.
If it takes a club being thrown out of a competition entirely to get this to stop then so be it because the longer this goes on, the worse it will get.