22 Oct 2010 / 07:56
Several thousand police officers will secure Belgrade's downtown and the stadium for the derby between rival Belgrade football clubs on Saturday, Balkan Insight has learned from a source in the police.
Bojana Barlovac
"I do not expect violence to erupt on the streets of Belgrade on Saturday as a heavy police presence will be securing the city," the source said.
In order to secure the safety of participants, the stadium's capacity, however, will be reduced - 20,000 out of 55,000 seats will be left empty.
Representatives of the Serbian Interior Ministry, the Football Association of Serbia, and the Red Star and Partizan clubs decided at a two-hour long meeting on Thursday afternoon that the 139th derby will go ahead with fans present.T
his sent a message to the public that the football clubs had previously made deals with their supporters.
Slobodan Georgiev, a Serbian journalist who regularly comments on sports events, told Balkan Insight: "The football clubs have been able to control their fans in the past. I don’t expect violence given the tight security:”
Representatives of the two teams are scheduled to meet on Friday to calm the atmosphere and call on fans to peacefully watch Saturday's match so that images of hooligan riots in Belgrade do not once again hit world news headlines.
On October 10, thousands of hooligans attacked police in central Belgrade in an attempt to disrupt the city’s Gay Pride Parade, leaving more than one hundred people injured and causing damage estimated at more than one million Euros.
Two days later, at a EURO 2012 qualifying game in Genoa, Serbian soccer hooligans cut through fencing and threw flares onto the pitch, forcing the referee to cancel the Italy-Serbia game just minutes after it had started. The violence continued after the fans left the stadium and 138 people were arrested.
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