Association football culture

BELGRADE - Outgoing Serbian PM Ana Brnabic said on Monday that, as new parliament speaker, she would try to establish dialogue and defuse tensions in society.

Greece will allow its top league soccer matches to be played with fans from February 13, two months after top clubs were ordered to play behind closed doors following the severe injuring of a police officer in violence during a volleyball match.

It is a common secret from Russia to Latin America and from Eastern Europe to the Western Balkans that hooliganism and common crime often tread common ground; that hard-line associations of fans of the rituals of war and violence are sometimes the reservoirs from which extremist formations and organized crime recruit executioners.

The 12 people accused of the murder of 19-year-old Alkis Kampanos on February 1, 2022 in Harilaou, Thessaloniki and the injury of his two friends told a court on Monday that they did not beat him. 

The trial for the soccer hooligan-related incident is taking place at the Mixed Jury Court of Thessaloniki. 

Football hooliganism is closely linked to politics, nationalism, violence and organized crime in the Western Balkans, a report says, with the highest links noted in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He is known to the authorities for a case of violence between fans in 2019, for which the trial is pending

A number of PAOK soccer fans were detained on Monday night in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, for violating restrictive measures on movement, after dozens gathered outside their team's stadium to celebrate the club's 94th anniversary.

Officers who arrived outside the stadium urged fans who were chanting slogans to disperse, but were ignored.

Police in the northern port city of Thessaloniki placed three suspects under arrest on Monday in connection with the death the previous night of a 28-year-old Bulgarian man following clashes between rival soccer club fans.

Police said on Monday that 16 people were arrested over clashes between fans of cross-town rival soccer clubs Olympiakos and Panathinaikos on Saturday evening in the Athens suburb of Zografou.

Unknown assailants attacked and vandalized the home of an officer of a police unit that deals with sports violence early on Friday morning in the Athens district of Galatsi.

The vandals used a gas canister and flammable liquid to create a small explosion outside the officer's home and spray-painted abusive slogans on the walls.