Far too many police were sent to last week’s Russian Super Cup tie despite plans to reduce their role at matches, the Russian Premier League’s security chief said Friday.
Instead of the typical Russian approach of flooding a stadium with thousands of police, the league wants to leave more of the work to stewards and security guards in a push for “invisible security”.
Against the league’s wishes, many police, some of them heavily armed, descended on the Super Cup match between Rubin Kazan and Zenit St. Petersburg on Saturday, the league’s director of security Alexander Meitin said.
“At the Super Cup we were supposed to guarantee security with 500 security personnel and stewards, but law enforcement units were deployed by order of police at the stadium,” he said.
Organizers then told some of the police to leave, he said.
“At the start there were lots of them, but because of that we were able to get the people to leave who were equipped with specialized ammunition.”
Rubin won the match 2-0.
The Russian Interior Ministry announced in May that it wanted to shift responsibility for public order at football matches to the clubs because committing up to 5,000 police to games leaves the streets dangerously under-supervised.
Public order at Russian football has grown as an issue over the last few years, with clubs fined on a weekly basis for their fans' misbehavior.
Typical transgressions include violence, throwing flares onto the pitch and abusive chanting.
The league's executive director Sergei Cheban said the next few months would see a transition phase between police and clubs carrying responsibility for security through effective stewarding.
The 2012-13 Premier League season kicks off Friday with a comparatively low-key game as newly-promoted Mordovia Saransk host Lokomotiv Moscow.
