By Jaroslaw Adamowski
July 1 – The Czech football association (FACR) is to launch a series of measures to increase safety at stadiums, curb violence and improve communication with fans, said Dusan Svoboda, head of the country’s Football League Association (LFA).
The measures include establishing a fans’ ombudsman tasked with ensuring efficient communication between Czech football clubs and fans, as well as setting up a national database of stadium bans to prevent those prohibited from entering stadiums from attending matches in various parts of the country.
“We always talk about persecuting fans and intensifying repression. We don’t talk about decent fans because only those matches where incidents take place are publicised,” Svoboda told local daily Mlada fronta DNES.
Under the plan, the ombudsman will be tasked with liaising between football fans and Czech sides. Fans will be able to contact the ombudsman with various issues, for example, to report interventions of security personnel which, in their opinion, were unjustified.
Svoboda did not say who will be named the first ombudsman. The person will act as part of the FACR staff.
The league’s chief executive also said he has ordered a security expert to create a national database of fans who were handed stadium bans by Czech courts.
“We want to have all the people who are prohibited from entering stadiums in a single database, and be able to share this data with whoever we need to. Above all, with the clubs,” Svoboda said, adding that “this is not simple because of the law on personal data protection.”
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