Quarrel in the Swedish heel: "Mess in many different guises"

The security staff at Friends Arena had their hands full during yesterday's Nations League meeting between Sweden and Serbia.

The war in the former Yugoslavia is still engaging and upsetting.

- What we did yesterday was to sort out flags that were directly political with messages that had to do with the former war in Yugoslavia, linked to certain places and so on.

We had expertise in place that helped us figure out which flags meant what.

What is de facto politics and what is not national flags.

It was like starting the middle school again and having a flag lesson, there were a lot of different flags and a lot of emotions, says security chief Martin Fredman.

But even though they brought in expert help in the entrances, they did not manage to put a lid on all emotions.

Among other things, a real quarrel broke out in the Swedish heel after two people chose to wave their respective flags.

- There is a situation during the second half on the southern short side that escalated to a quarrel that we had to go in and interrupt and send two people out of the arena.

In that case, it was an Albanian flag and a Bosnian flag that were raised in the Swedish heel.

In addition to the fact that it resulted in unrest and disturbances on the Swedish side, the Serbian audience on the other side reacted to the same flags.

It was very sensitive yesterday with all the flags in general, which triggered several such events, says Fredman.

What do you do when that happens?

- In this case, I do not believe that any police report was made by any of the parties.

As the people were removed from the arena due to the incident, I would think that this particular incident is outrageous.

Banning ordinary national flags is completely out of the question.

- We are of the opinion as organizer that we live in a country with fairly high expectations that we should follow the constitutionally protected rights and so on.

And to ban a flag at the entrances just because it is a flag, we have said that we really should not do that.

But if there are messages or connections to sensitive parts in it, we will stop it already at the door as we did yesterday, perhaps mainly on the Serbian side, which brought with it quite different message banners and different flags that may not have had to do with the Serbian nation. , says Fredman.