Fans celebrated peacefully as hosts Germany won the opening World Cup match 4-2 on Friday but officials said they would take no chances with security at the world's most watched sporting event.
MUNICH: Fans celebrated peacefully as hosts Germany won the opening World Cup match 4-2 on Friday but officials said they would take no chances with security at the world's most watched sporting event.
“It could not have been any quieter,” a spokeswoman for the Bavarian police said after a trouble-free start to the month-long tournament. Fans had been asked to turn up about three hours before each match to help prevent queues and had to pass through a double ring of security -- a police check on the approach to the stadium and a ticket check at the entrance.
“Everyone can come, shout until they lose their voices, have a great time and feel at home with friends,” said Rainer Riedl, interior ministry spokesman in the Bavarian capital Munich where Germany kicked off the tournament with a thrilling win over Costa Rica.
“But the message to any hooligan or trouble maker is clear -- security will function and we are not here to joke around.”
Tickets for the entire tournament are personalised, each one bearing the buyer's name, in a special measure designed to boost security and stamp out black market trading, but sparking concerns that such intense checks may prove to be impractical.
Queues were kept at bay as only few of the 65,000-plus fans streaming into Munich's stadium had their passports and ID cards checked against the names on their tickets.
One fan in a Costa Rican outfit said it had taken him half an hour from the subway station to the inside of Munich's newly built, 340 million euro ($430 million) stadium.
“We only check some passports,” said steward Bernd Hanselmann, who has taken three weeks leave from his regular job. “It would not work otherwise.”
Additional police forces patrolled around the stadium, with a helicopter and police vans on standby on a nearby hill.
German officials have terrorism and hooliganism uppermost in their minds as they try to protect the month-long tournament without stifling it with security.
Security officials say that although there is no evidence of any concrete militant plans, there is a general “abstract risk” of an attack. They saw the opening match and the July 9 final in Berlin as the most symbolic, and therefore attractive, targets.
Munich witnessed one of the most traumatic events in the history of sport when Palestinian militants massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games.
Authorities had imposed a no-fly zone with a radius of 56 km around the stadium for the opening game. NATO's joint fleet of Awacs radar aircraft based in Germany and Britain was poised to start patrols that will run throughout the World Cup finals.
“The first flight for us will be today,” said a spokesman at the Awacs base near Aachen in western Germany.
A single E3-A aircraft at 30,000 feet can detect a hostile aircraft at any altitude from more than 360 km and direct German fighters to intercept it.
The security net involves 250,000 police on duty around the country and a comprehensive intelligence-sharing network with a round-the-clock unit in Berlin at its nerve centre.
But the fans appeared to be enjoying themselves. German and Costa Rican colours dominated Munich's central Marienplatz square, where soccer anthems were blaring out and a large screen had been set up for those without a ticket.
“This is a once in a lifetime experience,” said a fan from Kiel in northern Germany, wearing a black-red-gold hairpiece and tucking into white sausages and a beer.
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