Fireworks In The Goalie Box!

Last Thursday our Danish teacher gave us all tickets to the F.C. København versus Brøndby Football (soccer) game for Sunday. When these two bitter rivals face off, I was told it is always a lively game both on and off the field due to the hooligan spirit! Thinking that this was something my friend Sandra would like, my "Danish Buddy", I got her a ticket to the game and we made our plans to go on Sunday.

Well, time flew by as it tends to do, and I am sitting on the train with another girl from DIS heading to the station. We knew that we were getting closer to the stadium when half the train was full of people wearing team parafernalia and drinking Liter cans of Carlsberg. After meeting Sandra at the train station we quite literally followed the masses to the stadium, all three of us thinking that this was going to be a very entertaining game in more ways than one. After finding our seats we got some Danish hotdogs "french style". Basically this is where they take hollowed out baguette halves (hole down the middle, with no splits in the side), they put a Danish hotdog in it, and then squirt Ketchup or whatever you want down the hollow. Needless to say I was quite amused by this hotdog evolution, though I must admit that it was a lot easier to eat.

While we were enjoying our hotdogs before the start of the game we were observing the hooligans for both teams, who were sitting in a section behind both goal boxes. They are very...enthusiastic. I truthfully do not know how they maintain such high energy the whole game. Everything they do in synchronized, sometimes they are all holding scarves in the air, whipping scarves around their heads, jumping up and down as a unit, and of course singing their battle songs.

Here is a picture of FCK hooligans from afar. Don't worry you will see more pictures of hooligans or hooligan acts!

The game started off great particularly since FCK, that's who we were cheering for, scored not too far into the game. The game then continued as normal...

Then all of a sudden it became not so normal as Brøndby hooligans started lighting little fireworks and throwing them into the FCK goalie's box. It was so bad that they had to pause the game so the goalie didn't have to be there until all the fireworks had been extinguished. So there I am, in total shock that something like that would happen that I was too preoccupied to take a picture of the fireworks in the goalie box.

But no worries now I was alert, so when they started burning seats and then stairwells on their side on the field I was taking pictures! :)

Some Seats burning... you know just your typical football game.

It had to have been European football players who came up with the saying, "The Game Must Go On", because it did!

(From the mind of a Brøndby Hooligan) "ugh the game isn't going so well guys. Let's make a bonfire in the stairwell, and distract FCK!" (Other Hooligans) "Yeah, and let's fight with the security guards and get arrested too."














Despite the sideshow going on, the game continued, FCK scored another goal, and won the game 2-0!

On the way back to the train the three of us were in for a surprise since we walked out to police with helmets, armored police cars, and police dogs. I don't like crossing paths with a wild squirrel, let alone a dog, so once we saw/ heard the dogs, we high tailed it all the way to the train station!

We found out on Monday that 38 people were arrested, 64 were injured (including 2 police), and there were over 150,000 $ worth of damage to both the stadium and the sorrounding businesses who recieved smashed windows compliments of football enthusiasts known as hooligans!

Thus ended my introduction to the world of European football!!

'Til the next adventure comes around