A protest action involving ultras from both team’s involved in the Bundesliga Saturday evening “Top-Spiel”. Traveling supporters of 1. FC Köln declined to attend the match against Bayer Leverkusen due to excessive security checks en route to the BayArena. Leverkusen ultras demonstrated solidarity with their counterparts, rolling up their banners and suspending vocal support of the home team.
As confirmed by the visiting Bundesliga club, some 500-600 Köln supporters (approximately half of the visitors block) opted not to enter the stadium due to “very intensive” security checks that were “inappropriate from the point of view of the fans“. At least one Kölner support group has posted online that strip searches by the local police dissuaded the fans from attending the match.
The Leverkusen ultras – as instructed by their chant leader in the NordKurve – were told to withhold vocal and visible support in solidarity with the Köln fans. Leverkusen CEO Fernando Carro – speaking to Sky Germany prior to kickoff – noted that the strip searches were (to his knowledge) carried out by local police and not the club. Leverkusen later confirmed this in an official club statement.
Are such protests common in the Bundesliga?
Very much so. Such events happen all the time over the course of season across all the German professional footballing tiers. Supporters of the home team will often either engage in an atmosphere boycott or even vacate the stadium entirely in protest of how either they or their visiting counterparts were treated by the police on the way to the stadium.
To take one recent example, Eintracht Frankfurt fans (Frankfurt happens to be a hotbed for anti-police protests) and St. Pauli fans engaged in a joint protest over the detainment of St. Pauli fans on their way to the Waldstadion on matchday eight. Numerous other examples abound. Anti-police protest banners appear in the FanKurve during virtually every Bundesliga match.
Have tensions cooled after the IMK protest movement?
The movement reported on extensively by Get German Football News is officially over following the conclusion of the Interior Ministers Conference in Bremen last week. The Conference did produce the foundation of the feared “National Stadium Security” commission, albeit with promises that the new body would not operate with federal-level mandates and oversight.
Fans remain suspicious, with the main umbrella organization behind the movement calling the IMK decision a “lazy compromise”. German football culture will naturally remain antagonistic towards the growing security apparatus responsible for policing it. The divide will never cease and such protests will continue indefinitely.
