Serbian Cup final ends in chaos

Fireworks and flares in the gym, fans storming the court, players being hit by things thrown at them from the stands, smoke bombs and fighting fans were the scenes at the Serbian cup final between Red Star Belgrade and Partizan Belgrade.

The final eight of the Serbian cup was played in the neutral city of Kragujevac, 140 km south of Belgrade.

Yesterday the fans of Red Star were involved in street fights with the fans of local home team KK Radnicki, but there was no direct confrontation with the Partizan fans who had also traveled to Kragujevac in big numbers.

Although one of the Partizan players was hit by a lighter during the warming up, and there were some fireworks and scuffles in some parts of the gym, for Serbian standards that was nothing special and no reason for concern. The game was shortly stopped once during the first quarter, but without any major incidents. However, in the third quarter (result 43-43) a group of Red Star fans ran on to the court, trying to storm the other side where the Partizan fans were located. The riot police came into action and the referees decided to stop the game before things really got out of hand. After about 45 minutes both teams came back, but while they were waiting for things to get cleaned up the atmospehere was still agitated and both teams were bombarded by things thrown at them by the fans. Especially after Partizan coach Dusko Vujosevic got into a verbal fight with Red Star Vice President Nebojsa Covic and it alsmost looked like that would escalate into something worse.

It was just officially announced that the game will NOT continue tonight but the plans are to play the Serbian cup final tomorrow, most probably without any spectators.

Acoording to a police statement it was the fans of Partizan who started the chain of incidents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-6VY_v8cE0Y