story from soccernet.com
Thursday, September 30, 2004
'Millwall fan' stabbed in Budapest
BUDAPEST, Sept 30 (Reuters) - One man was stabbed in violence before the UEFA Cup tie between Hungarian champions Ferencvaros and English side Millwall on Thursday.
'Eight people were taken to hospital, out of these, seven had light injuries, however there is one man who speaks English who was stabbed in the back,' said Pal Gyofi, a spokesman for the Budapest ambulance service.
He said it was not clear whether the man was actually English and the extent of his injuries was not known.
Police said there were scuffles in the centre of the city before kickoff at 1900 GMT and that mounted police were deployed at the stadium as Millwall fans arrived without tickets.
A police spokesman said the problem at the ground with the ticketless fans was diffused quickly and a Reuters reporter said there was no trouble inside the stadium although there were reports of teargas being fired outside.
A police spokesman said that between 1,500 and 3,000 Millwall fans had arrived for the match -- the London club's first in European competition.
Millwall had a ticket allocation of 1,500 for the second leg of the tie which was won by 3-1 by Ferencvaros, after the first leg had ended 1-1.
Ferencvaros were recently fined for crowd trouble at a Champions League qualifier against an Albanian side and matches with local rivals Ujpest are regularly marred by violence.
Millwall, who qualified for the UEFA Cup as the losing side in the FA Cup final, have had a history of crowd violence, although the problem has been largely cleaned up by chairman Theo Paphitis in recent years.
The last major crowd violence at Millwall's ground, the New Den in southeast London, was in May 2002 in a playoff semi-final against Birmingham City.
same old Millwall, wonder what it's going to be like whwn we go down to play em in the Carling Cup, they have improved over the years but they still have the tag of being hooligans, and this sort of thing doesn't help it.