The umbrella European football organization, Uefa, initiated disciplinary proceedings against the Croatian Football Association due to racism and discrimination at the Euro qualification match between Croatia and Latvia, which was played at the HNK Rijeka stadium.
An observer from FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe), an association that fights against racism in football, submitted a report to the match delegate in which he stated that in the sector with Croatian fans, an individual was noticed who displayed the Ustasha flag on several occasions, and because of of that incident, UEFA initiated disciplinary proceedings against HNS.
Head of prevention, security and integrity at HNS Jurica Jurjević addressed the public and explained the situation.
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– Uefa opened disciplinary proceedings against HNS because of the match between Croatia and Latvia in Rijeka. There are two reports: the first is the UEFA match delegate report, in which no incident was recorded. There were no pyrotechnics, inappropriate chanting or transparencies with inappropriate content and the like. An additional report was submitted to UEFA by the FARE observer. In the middle of the first half, he noticed the flag that had the Ustasha symbol.
He claims that the security guards quickly noticed the flag in the stands and kicked the rioters out of the stands.
– We from the security service also noticed that flag in the first half. After that, the security guards took away that flag and took that person out of the stadium and handed him over to the police. The police arrested the person and initiated a misdemeanor case. It was subsequently established that there was also a third person on the scene, who brought the flag.
HNS will submit all information to UEFA and initiate legal action against individuals. They are also threatened with a lifetime ban from attending matches.
– We still have five days to make a statement, HNS will submit all the data it gathered from the match. It is a maximum of three people, and there were 8151 spectators at the match. This was the attitude in the stands, and it is the same in Croatian society, we are talking about thousands of miscreants. Croatian football, neither the national team nor society should be held hostage by such individuals. HNS will file a lawsuit against those three for damages and damage to honor and reputation. HNS works to prevent such behavior and that is why everyone else in the stands behaved normally. We will not give up easily because our position is that Croatian citizens do not deserve to play without an audience. Croatia does not deserve to play in front of an empty stadium. But if they punish us with a match without an audience in Osijek, then, if UEFA allows, it will be played in a stadium full of children.
Jurjević emphasized that this is a social problem.
– It is not hooliganism, these people are not members of any fan group, they have never come to national team matches before.
So is it possible that the whole story is set up?
– I wouldn’t want to speculate.
The head of FARE for Croatia told us that they did not report HNS and that he had no idea about it.
– This is the model by which UEFA and FARE and Fifa work. Everything we know, we know from the application we received.
What is the responsibility of the security guards that this flag was found in the stands and who hires them?
– The security company is hired by HNS, and that flag was not hung all the time or on the fence, but on several occasions for a few seconds. Which is hard to notice in the tribune of three to four thousand people in colorful colors. And on it was an Ustashi sign measuring 10 to 15 centimeters.
Are those miscreants threatened with a ban on coming to matches?
– Absolutely, permanent!
