England play Serbia in Group C of the UEFA European Soccer Championship in Germany.
Police have rushed to separate brawling soccer followers forward of the match between England and Serbia on the Euro 2024 soccer event in Germany.
On Sunday, social media footage confirmed males throwing chairs at one another outdoors a restaurant festooned with Serbian flags within the western metropolis of Gelsenkirchen. One group beat a hasty retreat as riot police arrived and wrestled at the very least one man to the bottom.
A Serbian fan advised The Related Press {that a} group of individuals had thrown glasses and stones on the space outdoors a downtown bar the place he and others had been sitting collectively consuming beer.
“There was a conflict and we’re superb. In order that’s it, we’re going to the sport, we hope we are going to win. That is about soccer,” mentioned the person, who recognized himself solely as Vladimir and mentioned he was from the Serbian capital Belgrade.
Reporters who arrived shortly after the incident discovered the road suffering from damaged glass and tables as a number of dozen cops stood by.
The match on Sunday night between England and Serbia has been tagged “excessive threat” by police over issues over potential fan violence.
“To date what ‘excessive threat’ means virtually is that lower-alcohol drinks might be offered and no alcohol in any respect may be drunk contained in the stands within the stadium,” Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane mentioned, reporting from Munich.
Solely low-alcohol beer is being served within the Gelsenkirchen stadium in an try to scale back the potential for issues.
“One complicating issue is that UEFA, the mum or dad organisation of those championships, has mentioned that the obstacles contained in the stadium must be eliminated … that means the English and Serbian followers may very well be intermingling contained in the stadium,” Kane famous, including that the German police have been placing in quite a lot of effort to forestall such hooligan scuffles.
About 20,000 England followers and 10,000 from Serbia are anticipated to converge on the town for the sport.
The match might be performed at Enviornment AufSchalke and begins at 9pm native time (19:00 GMT).