On top of the violence, when word made it around to other arenas, players in Cairo stopped and wanted to take a moment of silence. Fans didn’t like that, and set the fucking stadium on fire.
I don’t know what the Egyptian football federation is, but there should be long-term sanctions against both teams. Maybe the Cairo team as well. It’d be a shame to punish the players, but I’m not sure what else can be done if those directly involved aren’t caught.
Once all the facts are in, I can see this one moving to Great Debates. At the minute, what is in the press (western press at least) seems to suggest that it started out as a football thing and then rapidly turned into something else, with anti-government chanting and other protests but even these stories, as I understand them, are a bit muddled as people try to work out what is/was going on.
At least one report I’ve seen says that there are “always” tensions between these two sides. I wonder whether this will be “contained” as a football incident as a result.
Watching the video of the riot, it looked a lot less like a football riot and more like “band of thugs bent on mayhem picked a place where they knew a lot of people would show up.” This was a planned attack.
That’s not counting the 50+ people that were injured in clashes between Al Ahly ultras and police after their match with Kima Aswan or the 12 that were injured when police fought Zamalek ultras against Wadi Degla.
The fact that all of that went down after the revolution and in such a similar fashion is too much for a reasonable man to take. Ultras, especially those of Al Ahly, are known to be a huge headache and enemy for the army and police and critical for the revolution.
