Keith Downie: Questions for UEFA after West Ham and Eintracht Frankfurt fans clash in Seville
Questions need to be asked of UEFA after West Ham and Eintracht Frankfurt fans clashed in Seville reports Sky Sports’ Keith Downie.
Footage on social media emerged last night (Wednesday 9 March) of violence on the streets of the Spanish city, with Frankfurt fans reportedly attacking Hammers fans with bottles and sticks, leading to retaliation.
The German side beat Real Betis in the Europa League yesterday, a day before West Ham play Sevilla in the same competition tonight, with both matches originally scheduled on the same date.
Downie reports from the city for Sky Sports: “There were pretty ugly scenes here last night.
“Questions need to be asked of UEFA. Originally, Eintracht Frankfurt were scheduled to face Real Betis in Seville on Thursday… UEFA decided to move the match a day earlier.
“I’ve been here for a couple of days and there have been Frankfurt and West Ham fans in the city; there’s only a certain number of flights to bring the fans to the city, so many of them arrived a couple of days earlier.
“With home fans from Sevilla and Real Betis, that’s four clubs in the city across a 24-hour period for two games and has kind of set something up.”
Asking for trouble
English football fans unfortunately have a pretty terrible reputation on their travels.
It only takes a small group to create shocking pictures that quickly spread online.
In this instance it appears that the trouble was instigated by others but it will make the club look bad all the same, ahead of a big European game that many fans have been looking forward to for months.
Unless there was some other major difficulty then it would have been the easiest thing in the world to switch the home and away legs of one of these two ties.
The European governing body should be well aware of the chances of trouble even between the two sets of fans involved in one game, let alone with two traveling groups being in the same city and doubling that threat.
This seems like a basic error, and a potentially major one, so questions should indeed be asked, and potentially measures put in place to avoid similar situations in future.
In other West Ham news, David Moyes has spoken about the “mistake” the club made that he is working to prove.
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