The Swedish Football Association (Svff) had the opportunity to award 200 tickets to Swedish fans to attend a Nations League meeting outside Serbia.
But they let it go – much to the disappointment of the blue and yellow fans.
Very sad, says Susanne Wanberg Peterson, president of the supporting organization Camp Sweden.
The Serbian Football Association was banned from attending after a repeated breach of UEFA regulations. Despite this, the latest reports indicate that there will be spectators (young men between 7 and 14 years old) in the stands during Saturday’s Nations League meeting with Sweden.
There can also be Swedish supporters on site. When a national team is sanctioned for playing without an audience, the away team still gets 200 tickets, according to the UEFA rule.
But SvFF chose not to take advantage of the opportunity – and claimed security reasons.
– They concluded that in this case these tickets will be in the section behind the bench. They were afraid that Swedish fans might misbehave. Swedish fans have a very good reputation all over the world and we always act. I know which class of people would have chosen to travel downhill, as it is the oldest sentinel of our members, says Susan Waenberg-Petersson.
“spend a lot of money”
What do you think of SvFF’s decision?
We think it’s really sad because we know there are fans who spend a lot of money watching the national team – and to do that you have to book early. You book right away when you know you can go, which means that these are often non-refundable tickets.
– If you could have made such a small gesture to the fans who left, it would have meant so much to the fans – and I am absolutely convinced that we would have acted. Obviously I am disappointed.
Wänberg Petersson believes there will be approximately 60 Swedish supporters at the site in Belgrade. They must now try to find another place to watch the match.
Could this affect your relationship with the team?
It does reduce a little bit from the sense of confidence in us as supporters, but I hope, if a similar situation arises in the future, we can have an earlier and better dialogue on the subject.
SvFF . Answers
Christopher Lund is responsible for the Football Association’s fan club and ticket sales.
– We received a decision from UEFA this summer which means that the arena is closed to Serbia. Then we announced to everyone that we wouldn’t be able to offer any fan club submissions tickets, Lund says.
– Then it turned out that there were 200 tickets, as usual they were assigned to partners, relatives, etc., but we decided “well, it’s a closed yard, we don’t want any Swedes in the place because it’s like in Belgrade”. So we declined those tickets.
According to Camp Sweden, it cited security reasons and a fear that Swedish supporters would not act.
In this case, I may have been the one who wasn’t clear. What we had is that we can’t really manage it on site, there are really no resources, then we can’t guarantee what happens. So it’s not that we didn’t allow it because we want to blame the supporters, we have very good and positive supporters and we never have problems.
“regrettable”
What do you think about the fact that there will now be Swedish fans who will not enter the arena?
– Of course it is a pity, not because the team does not want to support or that we do not value our fans. This was a decision that was taken in stages that we may not have fully considered in hindsight, but the decision was made because of the resources we put into the Serbia match.
Sweden captain Jan Andersson spoke on Monday about the situation:
What a shame, one might think, is that our partisans are not allowed to attend. I think this is unfortunate. We have a group that follows us and that’s something we really appreciate, not least when they’re in the outdoor matches. He said at the time if you let the guys in, we would have liked to have Swedish supporters as well.