Man City-Liverpool forced to move daytime game

The English Premier League is a great place to support your favorite team, but sometimes it can get out of hand.

Liverpool and Manchester City’s 2023/24 English Premier League Round 13 match on November 26 has been rescheduled. The reason: violent supporter clashes.

On Nov. 14, the UK’s Daily Mail reported that “police have moved the Manchester City-Liverpool match by five hours from its original 5:30 p.m. kickoff to 12:30 p.m.”. The same day’s 12:30 p.m. match between Arsenal and Brentford in the 13th round of the league was pushed back instead.

“The Man City-Liverpool match has been brought forward. “Local security forces, including police, will not allow the game to kick off in the early evening,” it said, “due to frequent clashes between supporters.

Liverpool and Man City are two teams locked in a fierce battle for the top spot in the Premier League.

The rivalry is at its highest point since 2010. The last time they met in the League Cup tournament in the 2022/23 season, it turned bloody. It was the League Cup, so it was played at night. “A Man City teenage girl fan was left with a ‘scar that will last a lifetime’ after being hit by a plastic bottle filled with coins the size of a piggy bank, thrown from the away end of Liverpool’s seats,” the Daily Mail reported.

Both clubs asked fans to remain calm before the game, but there were more than 50 items thrown onto the pitch from the Liverpool away end alone. The bloodshed ultimately resulted in Liverpool being punished by reducing its away support from 3,000 to 2,400 seats for the 29th round Premier League match at City in April of that season.

City won the match 3-2 and 4-1 in the League Cup and league respectively. Liverpool lost the game and lost the manners of their fans.

That’s not to say that City fans have good supporters’ manners.

City fans traveled to Liverpool’s Anfield home in October of last season for the league’s 11th round match and graffitied “murderers. In the return fixture at home in April, they sang a mocking song about the Hillsborough disaster, one of the biggest tragedies in football history, earning a stern warning from the club and the Premier League’s governing body.

The Hillsborough disaster was a collapse and crush injury that occurred in 1989.

The tragedy occurred at Hillsborough Stadium, which was hosting an FA Cup quarterfinal match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, when 30,000 Liverpool fans crammed into a 1,600-seat stadium and the structure collapsed.

The stadium’s management misjudged the number of Liverpool fans and allowed them to enter the stadium at once, causing the stadium’s stands and large barbed wire fences to collapse as more than the maximum number of spectators were concentrated in one area. With 97 soccer deaths and 766 injuries, it was the deadliest non-civil disturbance 토토 in global soccer history and remains one of the worst tragedies in world soccer, and a deeply scarring event for Liverpool fans.

Having made a mockery of the tragedy, City fans have not been immune from criticism as hooligans, a term that refers to extreme soccer fanaticism, often accompanied by violence. In April, the club issued a statement saying it was “deeply disappointed in our fans” and criticized all supporters who mocked the Hillsborough tragedy.