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Stadium safety and security has been among the greatest ongoing concerns for football bodies around the world.

The history of football is littered with tragic tales of deaths from stampedes, overcrowding of stadiums, fires and other hazards.

On Monday, FIFA and AFC held a joint workshop for National Security Officers in Asia, with the aim of teaching security officers how to ensure safety inside and outside stadiums.

The panel was headed by FIFA experts Walter Gagg and Adnan El Guindy, as well as Malaysia’s FIFA Security Officer Datuk Dell Akbar Khan and FIFA Development Officer Windsor John.

Similar workshops will be held in each confederation. FIFA decided to act after 19 fans died and more than 130 were injured in a crush at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium in Abidjan before Ivory Coast played Malawi in March.

Need for full-time officers

One of the first messages hammered home to the more than 25 representatives from AFC was the need for full-time and qualified National Security Officers. Asia currently only has four Security Officers on the FIFA panel.

“FIFA will support all Football Associations and National Security Officers,” said Al Guindy. “But at the end, if they cannot meet the requirements and if stadiums do not comply with certain standards, it will be banned from use.”

A major obstacle to proper stadium management is ownership. In many cases around the world, stadiums are owned by the government or by private concerns.

Crowd management

Still, FIFA is insisting that FAs work with owners to ensure proper crowd management.

“Although we know that stadiums are sometimes not controlled by FAs, there should be a proper balance between the facilities available and the spectators,” said Al Guindy.

“FAs should be encouraged to share information between the local people, police, fire department, security and stewards. If there are problems, the FA should seek advice from FIFA.”

FIFA regulations

FIFA regulations call for facility managers to be able to empty a capacity stadium within eight minutes. If they are unable to do so, they should limit the capacity to a manageable number.

Other requirements are for an outside perimeter to allow fans to spill out of the stadium, match tickets sold away from stadiums and the separation of spectators from players and the media, among others.

Many deaths in past stadium tragedies were because of fans without tickets, or counterfeit tickets, surging into crowded areas that have inadequate supervision.

“We insist that fans have tickets before they are allowed into the stadium. And tickets should never be sold on match day at the stadium,” said Al Guindy. “Even if the match is free of charge, the organiser should still print tickets and only allow those with tickets to go inside.”

Full-house

Iran’s famous 100,000-capacity Azadi Stadium regularly attracts full houses for the national team as well as popular Iranian Tehran-based clubs.

The responsibility of stadium security for Azadi rests with Mehdi Farahanifar, of Iran’s powerful Physical Education Organisation.

He told the-afc.com that PEO applies many of the practices encouraged by FIFA, and security has been boosted after six people died during a stampede at a FIFA World Cup 2006 qualifier against Japan.

“We pay a lot of attention to what FIFA is doing,” he said. “We want to learn as much as we can so we can tell others in Iran how it should be done.

“We came up with our own security regulations, which were approved by the country’s top security council.”

Farahanifar said the key to security in Iran stadiums was ensuring proper cooperation between sports bodies and the police.

“We don’t want too much of a heavy police presence inside stadiums,” he said. “We want the crowd to enjoy the game. But sometimes, the police don’t understand this because they are not really sports people.”

(Source: the-afc.com)