Trouble brewing for return of tense Hamburg derby

BERLIN: Police in Germany are expecting more than a thousand hooligans to clash with trouble already brewing ahead of Sunday’s league match when Hamburg and St Pauli meet in the city’s first derby for seven years.

After 55 years in the Bundesliga, Hamburg’s relegation last May means there will be a league derby in the Hanseatic city for the first time since 2011, when St Pauli last played in Germany’s top flight.

Hamburg’s Volksparkstadion ground, which will host the second-division match with a sellout crowd of 57,000 expected, is just 6.5 kilometres (4 miles) from St Pauli’s more modest Millerntor stadium.

Police are on high alert with the match to kick off at 1330 local time (1130 GMT).

“We anticipate a much higher than average police mobilisation,” said Hamburg police spokesman Timo Zill.

“We will be very present and will monitor the situation.”

Trouble was brewing in the city long before kick-off.

Last week, 20 hardcore St Pauli fans attacked a group of six Hamburg supporters, leaving two in hospital.

In return, life-sized dolls, in the brown and white colours of St Pauli, were hanged from eight bridges across Hamburg on Tuesday.

There is no love lost between the rival fans.

Supporters of Hamburg, back-to-back German champions in the early 1980s and European champions in 1983, regard themselves as the city’s main club.

St Pauli, whose ground is situated near the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s red-light district, was adopted by local squatters and punks.

The two clubs’ ideological differences came to a head in the 1980s and 1990s, when neo-Nazi hooligans controlled the terraces at Hamburg and opposed the ultra-left St Pauli fans.