Djurgårdens Fans Not Good at Celebrating, or: Why You Should Support Assyriska in 2010

By: Daryl | November 11th, 2009

I didn’t really have a favourite Swedish Superettan (second tier) team to support until recently. But then Luka emailed The Offside and persuaded us to start a blog for Assyriska Föreningen, and I’ve been following their fortunes through the season.

Assyriska finished 3rd in the Superettan, which was enough to earn a promotion/relegation playoff vs the 14th place Allsvenskan (top tier) team, which in 2009 was Djurgårdens IF. Assyriska won the first leg at home 2-0, and all was looking good. But then came the second leg, above.

Djurgårdens won 3-0, which means they get to stay in the Allsvenskan. Their fans celebrated with a pitch invasion. A pitch invasion that involved attacking Assyriska’s players, as you can see in the above – disgraceful – video.

Djurgårdens can expect a fine and hopefully some sort of sanction. Maybe some of the attackers will even be identified and charged. That’s what I’d like to see anyway.

As for Assyriska, this marks a frustrating end to what sounds like a rough year. Aside from the above incident, the Assyriska clubhouse was burned down and 18 year old defender Gabriel Owrohum was assaulted by fans of rival team Syrianska.

All of which – plus Luka’s quality blogging – means Assyriska is my Superetten team to support in 2010. I hope after reading this that it’s yours too.

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Category: World Football

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Johnny

I was half expecting someone to come up and pop Andi Toompuu near the end of that interview.
Luka

In total 4 of our players were attacked in some way, and our assistant had a coin thrown at him at half time which the fourth official did nothing about.

Throughout the match our players and staff were subject to abuse and death threats from DIF hooligans, who happened to be stationed behind the benches. Our younger players couldn't even concentrate on the game.

All this, yet most of the ground's security were stationed in front of the Assyriska supporters. That, despite the fact that probably half of our traveling supporters (about 3,000) comprised of old men, women and kids.
Luka

I had to get Daryl to write something about this because I'm still too angry and depressed to write anything.
JD

Stupid, they were probably drunks. I read from thier web site that Assyriska was warned to run for it after the game becuase there were serious threats against thier players and coaches. I will also support Assyriska.
Matilda

Aww that's so nice the official site put up a link! A British club wouldn't do that, or not a top flight one anyway. I love Luka's blog (he's also one of my best commentators, despite in no way supporting Bolton).
Oli

Well, would you look at that. It's a good gesture from the club to put that article up. I'm convinced.

Don't suppose Barnsley would do that for me if I payed them in pure gold.
Daryl

If you need another reason to support Assyriska, then how about this, from their official website:

http://translate.google.ca/tra...
schaafito

As a student at a rather large American Football school in the US (Penn State represent), I have rushed a field a couple times in my life. What shocks me are those videos, because I don't think at any point during any of the invasions did a single person even think about going towards the rival team. The point of the invasion is to celebrate a monumental achievement with your players, not this kind of garbage. Boggles my mind.