Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that the associations of organized soccer clubs fans will close and only one official association will remain open for each team and operate at each football club’s headquarters.
The Greek PM made this announcement after a broad meeting with the participation of UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin, ministers and the owners of the football clubs Olympiakos, Panathinaikos, AEK and PAOK.
“The fan clubs will close. Every team will have only one, housed at the team’s headquarters,” Mitsotakis stressed.
He also announced that the entrance through the stadium gates used by organized fans will now come under the jurisdiction of the police, who will be empowered to carry out checks at the gates when it’s deemed necessary.
The premier expressed hope that the Greek state will not be forced to activate the ultimate measure, which will be the temporary exclusion of Greek teams from the European football club competitions, noting that football team owners had an obligation to first and foremost protect their investments.
On the murder of 29-year-old Michalis Katsouris before a scheduled game between AEK and Dinamo Zagreb in Athens the Greek PM appeared certain that the perpetrators will be found and punished.
He also admitted the Greek police’s operational failure in permitting the organized arrival in Athens of the Croatian hooligans who started the violent incidents outside AEK’s stadium in Nea Philadelphia.
Calling fans’ violence “the cancer of football” UEFA President Aleksandar Ceferin expressed his certainty that such incidents of club supporter violence will not happen again.
“These people are not supporters. They use soccer for their ideas,” he noted and promised that “we will do more to address this phenomenon.”
Ceferin added that the problem of hooliganism affected all of Europe.
