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Pre-match crowd trouble: what we know

This isn’t a great way to start the Europa League.

Arsenal FC v 1. FC Koeln - UEFA Europa League Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Arsenal were supposed to kick off their Europa League campaign today with a match against FC Köln. That match was supposed to kick off a half hour ago. It is now scheduled to kick off at 1PM PT/4PM ET/9PM BT. Why? This is why.

There are significantly more Köln fans in the area than there were ticketed fans, so the police decided to hold them back and push back KO for an hour to avoid a massive crush. But, once they decided to let people in, this started happening:

and then they started looking for trouble:

This does not look good. It doesn’t look good for Arsenal, for their stewarding, or for Köln and its supporters. As of now, the game’s still due to kick off in 30 min, but the situation seems fairly fluid so we’ll keep you updated.