Dortmund criticizes police measures targeting fans heading to Italy.
DORTMUND, Germany — Borussia Dortmund has stated that “disproportionate” police actions have hindered some of its supporters from traveling to Italy for Wednesday’s Champions League match against Atalanta, while Italian police have also approached fans who have already arrived.
“While a security-focused risk evaluation for a football match is reasonable, Borussia Dortmund is quite astonished by the extent and magnitude of the police actions taken,” the club remarked in a statement on Tuesday. “Such actions, in this manner and intensity, have never previously been enacted in relation to Borussia Dortmund’s international away fixtures.”
The club indicated it is seeking additional details regarding the “background and legal justification for these actions, which are entirely baffling to the club.”
The Südtribune Dortmund supporters’ group, which includes numerous smaller fan organizations, had previously announced on Tuesday that German police had prevented Dortmund fans from traveling to Italy over the weekend, but that these restrictions were successfully contested in expedited legal proceedings.
However, due to the federal police’s search for up to 300 Dortmund supporters whose presence in Bergamo has been prohibited for what Südtribune Dortmund described as “weak reasons,” it has created challenges for all Dortmund fans wishing to attend the match.
Südtribune Dortmund stated that its active groups have thus “reluctantly chosen to refrain from attending the match in Bergamo.”
Dortmund, which leads Atalanta 2-0 from the first leg of their playoff, expressed in its statement that it “sincerely regrets that some of its fans will be unable to participate in the away game in Bergamo due to this questionable conduct by the authorities.”
