Police acknowledge that Wednesday's football scuffles got beyond them

With the current resources it was an impossible task to preserve order

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Police in Helsinki have admitted that things got seriously out of kilter on Wednesday evening, prior to the Finland-Russia World Cup qualifying match, when processions of rival fans clashed on Mannerheimintie, with bottles, bricks, and flares being thrown and individual scuffles breaking out.
      The scenes of violence were unprecedented in the Finnish experience, and Seppo Kujala of the Helsinki Police Department acknowledged that the officers did not entirely succeed in keeping the peace.
     
"Our objective was to prevent these clashes in advance and fend off disturbances between the rival factions. In the main we succeeded, but when highly-motivated groups looking for a rumble were involved, some fights and incidents broke out."
      According to some estimates, there were between 8,000 and 10,000 Russian fans in town for the match, together with around 25,000 Finns, and several hundred police were deployed.
      Over the evening and during the match itself police arrested around thirty Russian fans and a dozen or so Finns. Nearly all were released on Thursday morning.
      The reasons for the arrests included bottle-throwing or carrying illegal flares.
     
There were also a number of assaults reported. However, there have been few actual reports submitted to police of a crime being committed, which would suggest that the fighting was a mutual affair.
      The scuffles climaxed in a clash between large groups of fans marching along Mannerheimintie.
      At one point, the vanguard of the Finnish procession caught up with the rear of the Russian fans' march.
      Kujala noted that it may well have been that the biggest troublemakers on the Russian side had not set out with the others from the Senate Square, and he implied that some of the trouble had been planned in advance.
     
Kujala pointed out that efforts were made to keep the two groups separate in order to avoid any volatile encounters, but said that with the resources available it was an impossible task.
      Matters were not helped by the fact that the police had no prior information on the route of the Russian procession.
      The Finnish march had on the other hand been arranged beforehand between the organisers and the police.
      Kujala stated that Wednesday's unfortunate events were unlikely to influence the tradition of marching en masse to matches that the Finnish National Team Supporters' Club (SMJK) has fostered.
     
Aside from the throwing of flares and fireworks in the enclosure for travelling Russian fans on the South Bank, there was little trouble in the stadium itself, and after the match the crowds dispersed without undue incident.
      The decisive Russian victory - they crushed Finland 3-0 - possibly contributed to the ultimately peaceful end to the evening.
     
As for the fireworks, they could lead to sanctions for Palloliitto, the Finnish FA.
      A FIFA match observer will be reporting on the game to the international body, whose disciplinary committee will consider the matter.
      As hosts, the Finnish FA were responsible for security, but their Russian counterparts may also face punishment from FIFA, as they sold the tickets to the fans in the areas of the stadium where the trouble took place.
      Security officials pointed out the difficulty of checking for items such as fireworks as fans came in through the turnstiles.
      Many of the items are very small, and hard to spot in anything but the most rigorous and time-consuming of inspections.
     
Some have suggested there might have been as many as 12,000 in the stadium supporting the Russian team, and particularly after the visitors had scored twice and effectively settled the outcome, the singing and flag-waving occasionally gave the impression this was a home match for Russia.
      A few local fans have grumbled that the willingness of Finnish and other entrepreneurs to sell the visitors large Russian flags only added to the sense of imbalance, but business is business.
      For the most part, the rivalry in the Olympic Stadium was friendly enough, and as always in these cases, the genuine supporters denounced the troublemakers as "not real football fans".


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Fans clash in the streets before game (11.6.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat