A football match in Tunisia between Club Africain and Esperance yesterday evening, Sunday, at Hamadi Al-Aqrabi Stadium in the city of Rades, witnessed complete chaos, crowd riots, and confrontations with the police, whose members were forced to fire tear gas.
The events broke out approximately 10 minutes after the start of the second half, as Club Africain fans lit large numbers of candlesticks, which led to the cessation of play on the first occasion, because some of them were thrown on the field and the players were unable to see, as a result of the dense smoke.
The match is considered a “derby” in the capital, and he was able to Taraji It was won against Africa, at the end of the eighth round of the coronation stage competitions of the Tunisian Championship (the first professional football league), thus taking a valuable step towards the coronation.
“The War” during the match between Esperance and Africain
Esperance won 2-1, as it was ahead by two goals when the Iraqi referee, Ahmed Kazem, was forced to stop play in the 54th minute, when the view was obscured by the skyscrapers on the field.
The match was stopped again, before its end, after the police were forced to use tear gas, before the confrontations with the African fans, as pictures of injured people who were taken to receive first aid as a result of suffocation spread on social media sites.
Local media said that the confrontations between fans and police extended even outside the stadium, and one fan was seriously injured as a result of the stampede.
The chaos and riots angered Esperance’s Portuguese coach, Miguel Cardoso, who described the match as a “war” and said that what happened constituted “a threat to people’s lives and violence, all of which are behaviors far removed from football and competition between teams.”
Cardoso continued, according to what was reported by the “Tunisia Gate” website: “It would have been better for the match to be stopped and not to continue playing in this way, in those inappropriate circumstances,” denouncing that his assistant was injured in the head due to the projectiles. Cardoso said that he cannot continue training if the football situation in Tunisia continues as it is.
Cardoso asked: “How can we demand an end to the violence against the Palestinians, and at the same time, we are witnessing all kinds of violence in the stadiums because of a football match? This harms Tunisia, and does not make Tunisian sports develop.”
Esperance excelled
Esperance, the leader of the standings, raised its score to 20 points and succeeded in overcoming its failure at the continental level, after missing out on the African title by losing to Al-Ahly of Egypt last Saturday in Cairo, with a score of 1-0, in the second leg of the final. African Champions League competition, To move away from its closest rival, Al-Ittihad Monastir, by 5 points, two rounds before the end of the race, meaning that one point is enough for it to win the title.
And he said “Wen Win” websiteThe result hastened the departure of coach Mounzer Al-Kabir and his replacement by the sheikh of Tunisian coaches, Faouzi Benzarti, who began his career with the team with a moral victory over the club of Al-Qarbi (2-1) in the eighth-final round of the Tunisian Cup competition. But he failed to win against Esperance in the capital derby.