Sweden: Mass brawl at Swedish girls' football match

A row between a parent and a referee at a girls' football match escalated into a brawl on Sunday.

The match, between two teams of 14-year-old girls, was being played at Möllevallen in Skurup. An exchange of words between the father of one of the players and the referee ended with the ref whacking a ball at the spectator.

"That's one version. The referee's version is that the parent threatened him with a corner flag," said Stellan Andersson, at south Skåne police.

The father went and got into his car while the referee called for reinforcements. Shortly afterwards, several cars full of people - including the referee's father - arrived.

Accoring to unconfirmed witness reports, they are said to have circled the father's car and tried to smash in the windows.

The father managed to drive away from the scene but two cars set off in pursuit.

"We went down there with four units. The atmosphere was very threatening at first. Nobody has been arrested but the matter has been reported. I don't know if both sides have reported it," said Stellan Andersson.

Claes Ohlsson spokesman for  Skånes FF's judging committee says that this year no girl's match was derailed in such a way.

A parent of one of the players and the judge started to argue, getting very close to getting physical, and then the fight escalated.

He says that last year Skånes FF started off a zero-tolerance project for improving the atmosphere around soccer games.  There was a problem, among other things, with parents interfering in the judge's work.  In this case the judge was only 17, and apparently was partially at fault for the events.  Ohlsson says judges might require further training, or special exams to serve as district judge.

Police talked of a culture-clash as a factor in the fight, are immigrants more involved in such events? 

Claes Ohlsson doesn't' want to generalize and has no statistics, by feels that immigrants are over represented in such cases.

Sources: The Local (English), Ystadsallehanda.se (Swedish)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Islam has problems coping with any non islamic culture whether it be sport, politics or art or education.

Someday the West will realise that West is West amd Islam is Islam. Just what its going to be like if real Europeans accept Turkey as a EU Member State?