Eastern European Football Is Back; Or, 150 Arrested.

Football is back, which means fans are back. Eastern European football is also back, which means Eastern European football fans are back. And this means European policeman have much work to do.

One of those clubs whose fans make more noise these days than the football team is Red Star Belgrade. One half of what might be the world’s most violent derby, that of Belgrade, they earned a couple headlines by setting hated rival Partizan’s stadium on fire last year. And so as not to disappoint their Czech hosts, they had 150 arrested before the game today.

Now if you’re a curious George, this is how you get 150 people arrested before a football game.

Hundreds of the Serbian club’s fans gathered in Prague’s medieval Old Town Square with some hurling beer glasses and other objects at passersby and others smashing nearby windows.

That’ll do.

What’s perhaps most incredible about this is that at the infamous stadium torching last spring, only 95 were arrested. So while beer glasses are bad, “other objects” must include things like rocks, knives, medieval maces, AIDS and plutonium. Despite the arrests, only 12 will be charged, coming in at a paltry 8%.

On the back of karma, Slavia won 3-0, likely sending Red Star crashing out of Europe. What might be better is if they were sent out of Europe all the way down to South America, where they’d fit right in.

	Soccer Forums	Team/International Results

Category: Europe, World Football

Tags: Europa League, Europe, Red Star Belgrade, Slavia Prague, World Football

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