Eighty football fans from Croatia held in Paris

PARIS (AFP) –

Dinamo Zagreb’s players take part in a training session on November 5 at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris, on the eve of the UEFA Champions League Group A football match against PSG. Police said they have arrested around 80 Dinamo Zagreb football fans in a hotel in the French capital just hours before the match.

Police on Tuesday said they arrested around 80 Dinamo Zagreb football fans in a hotel in the French capital just hours before the Croatian team was due to take on Paris Saint Germain.

The arrest came after supporters from the two teams clashed in street fights on the eve of their Champions League game. Interior Minister Manuel Valls had on Sunday imposed a travel ban on Dinamo fans coming to France for the match.

The scuffles on Monday evening ended with 24 people arrested and left one Croat supporter seriously injured, said police, who intervened at the popular night haunt of Place de la Bastille and restored calm shortly before midnight (2300 GMT).

Valls said Sunday he imposed the travel ban because he considered there was a real chance of “serious incidents occurring should fans from both sides come across each other”.

He added he was informed by Croatian authorities that 150 to 200 violent supporters from a gang called the “Blue Bad Boys” would be travelling without tickets for the match.

As a result of this information Valls had decided to forbid “from November 5 to midday November 7, the travel either individually or as a group, by road, rail or air of all Dinamo supporters to French border points and the Ile-de-France region (the Paris area)”.

Some 80 PSG fans were stopped on the Slovenian border with Croatia and refused entry last month on their way to the two sides’ match there.