There was a bit of bother after last night’s friendly in Austria against Eintracht Frankfurt, which was mostly down to the Germans, despite one or two headlines suggesting that we were the ones to blame.
The official attendance figure for the game was 1,100, with 450 from Leeds, but the match was held at the small Eugendorf ground, which seems to consist of little more than just a couple of low fences round the pitch. Three Leeds supporters and two police officers were injured in the fighting and 25 fans were arrested, 17 of them from Germany.
By all accounts the trouble seems to have been down to an orchestrated group of hard core Frankfurt hooligans, some of whom turned up to the game wearing balaclavas to cover their faces. They began by refusing to pay their bus fare on their way to the ground, which led to the police being called before they were eventually turfed off and made to walk the rest of the way.
When they had finally got to the ground about 50 Frankfurt fans stormed the main entrance, injuring security staff. Then after the final whistle fighting broke out again, sparked off when the Germans ripped down a Leeds fans banner. The confrontation on the pitch spilled over into the square in front of the ground where mounted police had to intervene.
A police statement confirmed that it was the Germans who were the instigators. "At the square in front of the stadium, runaway Leeds fans were again attacked by the Frankfurt fans.” And finally the Frankfurt mob moved on to Eugendorf town centre, where pepper spray had to be used to control them.
Despite the clear evidence that the trouble was mostly down to the Germans, we’ve inevitably had a couple of headline writers trading on our reputation to suggest the opposite. The Independent and the BBC went with "Leeds fans arrested after trouble breaks out”. No mention there of the majority of those arrested being German.
And of course we’ve had predictable comments on numerous message boards about ‘Leeds scum’, from people who find it far too much effort to find out about the truth before they reach for their keyboard.
In the game itself Leeds held a 1-0 half time lead through a rare Morison goal, before Eintracht game back to win 2-1. All the same, it sounds like a reasonable performance against a team who achieved a mid-table finish in the Bundesliga last season. Leeds made no fewer than eight substitutions in the second half, to give most of the first team squad a run-out against quality opposition.
Leeds now head to Norway for a friendly game against another Bundesliga side, Hoffenheim, in Lillestrom on Saturday. Let’s hope that the background to that game is a little more peaceful.