On Thursday night, Dutch police arrested two players from Poland’s Legia Warsaw team following their Europa Conference League match against AZ Alkmaar. This incident provoked a wave of outrage in Poland and abroad. 

Following AZ Alkmaar’s 1-0 win at home, Dutch police arrested two players from the visiting team, 28-year-old Serbian Radovan Pankov and 33-year-old Portuguese Josue Pesqueira. A video footage by Poland’s public broadcaster TVP shows Josue being led away by local police in handcuffs.

TVP journalists also reported that the president and owner of Legia Warsaw Dariusz Mioduski was even hit in the face by a policeman while several members of the Legia staff were hit with sticks.

If the version provided by the Dutch police is to be believed, the arrests and physical punishments were due to “harrasment”, according to Polish radio station RMF FM. A police statement reads that Legia Warsaw fans allegedly “stormed local police forces before the match, knocking one officer in riot gear unconscious as they violently stormed the stadium’s entry gate”.

The outrage on the Polish side was so significant that Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki “ordered the foreign ministry to take urgent diplomatic action to verify the events of the night. Polish players and fans must be treated in accordance with the law. There is no consent to breaking it” – he wrote on X.

Legia spokesperson Bartosz Zaslawski was quoted by RMF as saying the team would return to Poland without Josue and Pankov.

At the moment of writing, Josue was just released by the authorities while Pankov remains incarcerated.

Image: X @TVPWorld_com

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen