When we talk about a disciplinary proceeding, our mind strikes to a player who would have been caught exchanging bad words with other players or fans, but there are many teams, or we should say clubs, who are more infamous for their mischiefs than many notorious players/officials in soccer fraternity. Yes, you guessed it right; we are talking about Russian club Zenit Saint Petersburg and its fans who are considered as the most violent and autocratic. How can anyone forget their mandate that no gay or non-white player should play for the club and if anyone violates their ‘instructions’ he or she would be subjected to dire consequences. Apart from that another incident these fans, especially an organized group called Landscrona, are facing a threat from European governing body UEFA for is when apparently a German national flag was burnt during Zenit’s Champions League clash at Borussia Dortmund,. UEFA later instructed to begin a disciplinary proceeding to find out the actual scenario before and after the incident and if anyone did this with a bad intension. Political relations between Russia and Germany have never been enjoyable hence whenever these two States encounter each other even on a sports pitch, ambience heats up to the sky.
Landscrona has now issued a clarification over the matter and said the flag that was being displayed as burning was not the German’s national flag but a banner brought-in by a group of fans hence there is no reason to look for anything else out of it. They explained their side via a Russian social network where they mentioned, “A number of press outlets in Russia published information about the Zenit fans burning the national flag of Germany during the game in Dortmund. A banner belonging to one of Borussia’s fan groups was burnt, which was the only logical end to the encounter over two matches for the fans. Zenit had the upper hand and were stronger, which was demonstrated by fact that they managed to get their hands on the banner.”
They got the support over defense from none other than Zenit’s assistant General Director for Safety, Yury Fedotov, who said, “During the match in Dortmund, the Zenit fans tried on three of four occasions at the least to light flares. Other fans of our club put these flares out. Our supporters understood that if they were allowed to burn, this could have a negative affect on the team in the future.
“There was no flag present, it was a red and yellow banner, which belonged to the Borussia fans. According to our information, the Zenit fans bought this banner with them from St. Petersburg and there was no political ideology behind this. 2700 fans travelled from St. Petersburg to support their team and on the whole, they were well behaved. Three or four attempts to light flares is not that much in my opinion, while they were put out almost immediately.”