Aleppo fans cheer first home game in years
SYRIANS cheered excitedly in an Aleppo stadium on Saturday as they watched their first live football match in the war-ravaged city in years.
The Ittihad club beat Hurriya 2-1 in their first match on home turf since rebels took east Aleppo in 2012, dividing the northern city into a regimeheld west and rebel-controlled east.
The sixth-stage league game comes after the army last month retook Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods, regaining control of the whole city.
Police in full riot gear stood by as eager fans wearing winter jackets and woolly hats chanted their encouragement to their team on the dry grass pitch. A large Ittihad banner draped in the stands featured an image of President Bashar al-Assad.
Fans were delighted to return to the stadium, despite having lost friends who had been killed or fled Syria during its nearly six-year war.
“The last match I went to was in 2010,” said Mohammed Ali, who appeared to be in his early thirties. “Of course there were a lot more of us then. I was with my friends. Now some of them have travelled and others died.”
More than 310,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes in the conflict since it erupted with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Since 2012, Ittihad and Hurriya had only ever played games in other parts of Syria. Earlier games this season for both teams were held in the regime coastal stronghold of Latakia.
Maher Khayata, deputy head of the general sports union, this week said the game was “a first step towards Aleppo clubs returning to play on home ground, waiting for pitches to be ready”.
But so far no other game has yet been scheduled in Aleppo.
With games played previously all over the country, the Syria League was suspended after the conflict erupted nearly six years ago.
In 2012, matches resumed i n a reduced format and only in the regime-held cities of Damascus and Latakia.
A National Football Federation official last month said that Syria League games would now return to the central cites of Homs and Hama after they were deemed safe.