A mass brawl left more than 50 injured, two of them seriously, after police officers waded into a crowd of volatile soccer fans attending the Chivas-Atlas game at the Jalisco Stadium Saturday evening.
The violent altercation drew attention away from the game, known as the Clasico Tapatio, which ended in a 1-1 tie between the hometown rivals.
Acting swiftly, Guadalajara city hall slapped a closure order on the stadium Sunday and hit Atlas (the home team) with a fine of more than two million pesos.
According to other spectators at the game, police moved into a section of Chivas fans who had set off flares and were throwing them on to other supporters sitting in the tier below them.
“They were quickly outnumbered,” says Tom Marshall, a former Guadalajara Reporter staffer and blogger for espnfc.com who was at the game. “Chivas fans then proceeded to punch, kick and stamp police in the bleachers.”
Order was restored only after police reinforcements arrived and arrested 19 fans, seven of whom had traveled to Guadalajara from other parts of Mexico to see the game.
According to authorities, 30 fans and 21 police officers were injured, two of them requiring emergency surgery.
Some 750 Guadalajara police officers were deployed to ensure safety at the game but only 25 to 30 were sent in to control the unruly Chivas fans in an upper tier section of the stadium reserved for “hard-core” supporters numbering around 3,000.
Flares are banned from soccer grounds in Mexico and security guards are supposed to search fans as they enter stadiums before games.
According to some reports, prior to the start of the game police had closed several of the access points to the stadium causing bottlenecks of fans trying to get to their seats. To ease the flow, it has been suggested that the guards decided to wave many supporters through the barriers without searching them.
The official attendance figure was only 48,300 but Guadalajara city officials later revealed that the stadium was over its capacity by 1,323.
A statement issued by Club Deportivo Guadalajara Monday called the perpetrators of the riot “psuedo-fans” who they vowed to identify and ban from their own Omnilife Stadium and, they hope, the rest of the nation’s soccer stadiums.
The statement said from now on all fans who gather in the Omnilife’s low-cost zones designated for “barras” (groups of fans who stand up, chant and animate at games) must be known to the club and previously accredited.
City and state authorities have voiced concerns regarding the possibility of further violence at the Chivas-America encounter scheduled for the Omnilife on Sunday, March 30. Fans regard the game between Mexico’s two best supported teams as the most important in the soccer calendar. Passions are easily inflamed at these games and a large police presence will be on hand to monitor the sell-out crowd.
Perhaps somewhat unfairly, the Jalisco Stadium, which hosts all of Atlas’ home games, will be unable to host the team’s next match with Puebla, which will be played at the Tres de Marzo stadium.
By Wednesday, 11 of the Chivas fans arrested during the brawl had been released on bail. Eight were refused bail and face serious charges that, according to Jalisco Attorney General Luis Carlos Najera, could even include attempted murder, carrying a jail term of 20 years.
Najera said that video and photographic evidence is being studied to identify additional suspects. Police arrested four other fans on Wednesday.
Najera admitted a series of errors on the part of the city police force, some of whom were seen carrying pistols in their holsters during the brawl. Municipal officers are not permitted to carry their weapons during mass public events.
Up until recently, Mexico rarely witnessed the kind of rowdy fan behavior more common at soccer stadiums in European countries, as well as Argentina and Brazil. The Mexican Football Federation is looking at measures to introduce at games to maintain soccer’s reputation as wholesome family entertainment.