Cars burned, fireworks and chairs flew through the air, a police helicopter circled over the city center: In the run-up to Eintracht Frankfurt's second leg in the Champions League at SSC Napoli (21 p.m./live on the F.A.Z. live ticker for the Champions League and DAZN), serious riots have occurred in the southern Italian port city. The Corriere dello Sport wrote of a "guerrilla war" in the center of the city.
As seen on videos, police officers were pelted with tables and chairs by masked ultras and hooligans. At least one police car was set on fire. According to information from the F.A.Z., the arsonists are people from the joint fan camp of Eintracht Frankfurt and Atalanta Bergamo. The clubs from Lombardy and Hesse are connected by a so-called "fan friendship".
Amateur footage, however, also showed Napoli hooligans attacking police officers with sticks and shooting pyrotechnics at law enforcement. According to police sources, both fan camps were involved in the riots, as the news agency Ansa reported. It took a while for the emergency services to get the situation under control. The Frankfurt Ultras were then taken by bus from the city center back to the harbor district to their hotel. Napoli fans reportedly threw stones and bottles at the buses.
"It's clear that nobody wants to see that. It is the riots that we have had to fear since the day of the draw. We have to work through this completely. But that takes time," said Eintracht board member Philipp Reschke, who is responsible for fan issues, before the kick-off of the game. It seemed "a bit so," he said, "that the groups that were looking for each other also found each other" and added: "The most important thing is that there are no casualties. Neither on the police side nor with the fan groups involved."
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wrote on Twitter: "This violence tonight must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Violent criminals and chaotic people are destroying sport." Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi also condemned the riots. "The scenes of the destruction of our historic downtown are unacceptable," Manfredi said. "We condemn in the strongest possible terms these unspeakable acts of those responsible, from whichever side they emanated."
According to a final decision by Italian courts, the authorities approved the sale of tickets to visiting fans, but they should not have been domiciled in Frankfurt. The Eintracht rejected this unequal treatment of their own fans, however, and renounced the 2700 tickets due. Even most of the members of the official delegation as well as Supervisory Board Chairman Philip Holzer and CEO Axel Hellmann remained in Frankfurt.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Eintracht supporters travelled to Naples, some are said to be in possession of tickets, possibly purchased by fans of Atalanta Bergamo. On Tuesday evening, around 400 supporters are said to have arrived at the train station of Naples, received as expected by a similar number of police officers, as videos from Naples show, which circulate on social platforms.