There will be a heavy police presence but few visiting fans at Thursday’s soccer match between France and Israel in the Nations League, with authorities in Paris on high alert amid an increasingly tense political climate.
French police chief Laurent Nuñez said 4,000 police officers and security staff will be deployed around the Stade de France stadium, with another 1,500 police on public transport. The extreme measures come one week after violence against Israeli fans around a Europa League soccer game in Amsterdam in attacks widely condemned across Europe as antisemitic.
Three months after hosting an Olympic closing ceremony, the atmosphere has gone from festive to fearful and the national stadium was expected to be three-quarters empty for the match. French President Emmanuel Macron and French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau will be present.
Only 20,000 of 80,000 tickets have been sold with around 150 Israel supporters reportedly attending, escorted by police.
“We’ve tried to prepare for this match as normally as possible. But obviously none of us within the team can be insensitive to such a heavy context,” France coach Didier Deschamps said Wednesday. “It impacts the amount of supporters present tomorrow and everything that goes with it.”
The away match against Israel on Oct. 10 — which France won 4-1 — was played in Budapest, Hungary.
“These are situations the players are not accustomed to,” Deschamps said. “But we have to adapt.”
The low number of visiting fans comes after Israel’s National Security Council warned citizens abroad to avoid sports and cultural events, specifically the match in Paris.
Retailleau told French news channel TF1 on Tuesday that no specific threats were identified but “zero risk does not exist.”
Therefore, he said, exceptional measures are in place “before the match, during the match and after the match.”
The elite tactical unit of the French National Police, known as RAID, will be in the stadium and some police will be in plain clothes mingling with fans. There will also be heavy surveillance within Paris, including at Jewish places of worship.
“It is out of the question that we take the risk of seeing a repeat of the dramatic events, of the manhunt, that we saw in Amsterdam,” Retailleau said, adding that postponing or moving the game elsewhere was ruled out.
“France does not retreat,” he said. “France does not submit, and the France-Israel match will take place where it’s supposed to.”
Last Thursday night, Amsterdam witnessed scenes of chaos when Israeli fans were attacked by hordes of young people apparently riled up by calls on social media to target Jewish people, according to Dutch authorities. Before the game, a large group of supporters of the Israeli team could be seen on video chanting anti-Arab slogans as they headed to the stadium, escorted by police.
Protests erupted in Paris on Wednesday night against a controversial gala organized by far-right figures in support of Israel.
The game in Saint-Denis, the suburb north of Paris where the stadium is located, is scheduled to kick off at 8:45 p.m. local time (1945 GMT) on Thursday.
Nine years ago, Stade de France was one of several locations during the Nov. 13 terror attacks in which 130 people died. France was playing Germany that night when two explosions happened outside the stadium.
Deschamps, Germany coach Joachim Löw and all the players stayed together in the locker rooms for hours until it was safe to leave.
“It’s a sad date for us given what happened in 2015,” Deschamps said. ___
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
