The fans of Legia Warsaw made a lot of noise and showed effective choreos.
Photo: imago images / Mikolaj Barbanell
Every breath a victory! That is what Legia Warsaw fans demanded last week in the qualifying second leg for the Champions League. The home stadium was sold out with 28,500 spectators against Dinamo Zagreb. Legia has not torn anything internationally for a long time. Zagreb, on the other hand, is a permanent guest in Europe, although the grapes are also high for Dinamo internationally. The respective domestic league is dominated by both clubs, in the concert of the big players it is only enough for the fifth fiddle.
When it comes to riot and remnants, the active Zagreb fans – known as the Bad Blue Boys – are a European great. Ultras Legia are also famous and notorious for blatant choreography and wrangling away from the stadium. Both groups also emphasize a nationalistic note, which definitely raises the hair on the back of the neck of the cosmopolitan European.
To anticipate, it was less Neanderthal than expected. Perhaps the minds of both camps had calmed down during various skirmishes around the first leg in Zagreb? Perhaps the Polish polyps that were everywhere had forged the bad guys in chains?
Warsaw is clean and licked. Homeless people or drinkers who used to populate Poland’s capital have completely disappeared from the frighteningly pure street scene. Every hundred meters you can see squat, but extremely friendly police officers patrolling, the right-wing conservative PiS rules the country with a hard hand. Nevertheless, Warsaw’s angry youth managed to defrost many Croatian cars overnight and to shock some Croatian tourists while soaking up the sun on the Vistula.
On the other hand, on the return trip I had a little to do with the train drivers’ union, which of course has my full support for their strike. My train chugged through Poland and arrived four hours later in Berlin as a bus. I had many opportunities to observe wild animals peeking out of the bushes while stopping on the open road.
The choreo of the Ultras Legia at the beginning of the game was dedicated to the freedom fighters who started the uprising against the German fascists on August 1, 1944. 5000 names were presented on scarves – moving, blatant, big! Pyro at the start of the game and a stadium in white made my inner dove of peace shimmer. Croatians were not seen in the stadium when the Warsaw fan group hoisted the symbol of the Polish Home Army. That was probably not wrong, the German fur itched a lot and the looks of the Polish fans were not good.
Dinamo won an uneventful game 1-0, which lived off the powerful mood of the Poles, because of which I naturally undertook this ox tour. See Legia krakeelen once! After the 1-1 first leg, Zagreb can continue to dream of the Champions League.
On social media, the friends of the third half were allowed to admire various wobbly videos in the aftershow that showed teenage heroes playing hash at night and throwing chairs. The Polish Olympians won. Her Croatian fellow believers (Francis is their common shepherd) boasted in exactly the same way a week earlier. The respective opponents were accused of cowardice, malice and short-hairedness. The human genitals are particularly popular with Catholics as a means of insult, that is certainly a papal bull. The cops were seen posing in front of buses and automobiles in the footage. Nice with blue light and stick drawn. Football can be beautiful.
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