Wehdat vs Faisaly huzzah

Jordan has two major football clubs whose games reflect deeper political issues, Wehdat and Faisaly. To understand the difference between the fan bases a quick primer on the makeup of Jordan is required. After the 48 and 67 wars, many Palestinian refugees settled in Jordan. Here they were granted citizenship and have a much higher standard of living than in Lebanon. Wehdat is traditionally supported by Jordanian citizens with a Palestinian background and Faisaly by Jordanian citizens with a Jordanian background.

My students invited me and another teacher to a game between the two clubs. My first clue that things might not be as they seem is when the taxi driver said today's game would have a crisis, but considering this is the same word used for light traffic I shrugged it off as an exaggeration.

I met up with my students, we purchased tickets, and started standing in the general admission line. My students kept trying to enter through a closed exit but the police kept turning them back, but eventually they talked their way in. The stadium is setup with ten different sections each separated by a bolted gate guarded by policemen. Since we arrived late, still 2 hours before game time, we were in the worst section, but my students kept telling the policemen that we were guests from outside of Jordan. One by one we kept upgrading to better sections, each time after talking to the head policemen of who validated we were foreigners by speaking to us in Arabic very quickly.

So the game was fun, we were sitting on the Wehdat side and they won 1-0. We were not on the liveliest side, but it was still was extremely packed when sitting down.

After the game things got even more interesting. All of a sudden several rows on the side opposite of us were completely empty, and then we saw the police chasing people. The fans were unable to go anywhere as the gates were locked. This carried on for a few minutes and then suddenly about 20 rows cleared out, which was obviously a huge problem as those people had to go somewhere (the other side was even more packed than ours). Everyone started crowding up against the fence and crushing the people on the bottom of the pile. Thankfully the fence broke and people started falling onto the field. It was obvious some people were seriously injured.

At this point we were locked in on the other side of the stadium just watching. I started to head for the part of the stadium where it was emptier as I was more scared of being crushed to death than of the police hitting me. However, they opened the doors and told us all to scram. As we were leaving things started to escalate. The fans, angry due to the situation, didn't disperse. The cops resorted to force to secure the perimeter.

My students' car was in the middle of the calamity so they tried to stay inside the stadium until it all passed over. We were repeatedly kicked out only to be allowed to return when the police were informed we are foreigners.

This continued for the next hour or so, in that time we saw a few "riot" charges by the police, were tear gassed and all in all have a good time. Eventually, I convinced our students it's clear enough to make a break for the car. We started walking to the car, once we round the corner we found the base camp for the police is in the way. As we were walking a policeman started charging at us shouting something fairly harsh I'm sure. I heard our students say "they are from outside Jordan", the policemen stops in his tracks, smiles and says "Welcome to Jordan."