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CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Zlatan books Malmö square for football party

Footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic is booking an entire square in his Swedish home city to make sure that ticketless fans can watch his club Paris Saint-Germain's next clash with Malmö FF.

Published: 18 September 2015 14:36 CEST
Updated: 18 September 2015 16:36 CEST
Zlatan books Malmö square for football party
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is a former Malmö player. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT

It will be somewhat of a blast from the past for fans when Ibrahimovic and his PSG travel to Malmö for the second leg of their Champions League clash in November. The forward grew up in the southern Swedish city and played for its home club in 1994-2001.

But many were left disappointed when tickets for the hyped match quickly sold out as soon as they became available, with some criticizing MFF for prioritizing season ticket holders.

READ ALSO: Zlatan breaks internet in Malmö rush for tickets 

Their despair changed to elation when Ibrahimovic himself revealed on Friday that plans to have a big screen put up in the main square of Malmö (Stortorget) where the highly-anticipated match is to be broadcast live on November 25th.

“I previously said that the game will be heard all over Malmö. Now I've also made sure that all of Malmö will be able to watch the game. (…) All are welcome,” he wrote on Facebook before ending the message on a teasing note: “More surprises await that day. I'm on my way…”

The homecoming star striker has previously said that returning to Malmö for the Champions League is a dream come true, adding it was a “a pity” that the whole of the city will not be able to fit inside the stadium.

Malmö, who beat Celtic in a play-off to reach this stage, lost by two goals to PSG in the first leg of their Champions League clash in Paris earlier this week. Although the French side remain the favourite to win, the Swedish team usually perform well on home turf.

IN PICTURES: Zlatan Ibrahimovic pays visit to former Malmö home

Malmö FF's club chief executive Niclas Carlnén said on Friday that he was pleased to find out about the footballer's surprise.

“Demand for tickets has been incredibly great. Thanks to Zlatan's intitiative all MFF-ers have the opportunity to watch the game together in Malmö,” he said in a statement.

The event will be financed by the footballer himself, but Malmö city council will make available the main square and supply staff to make sure it runs smoothly.

“It is fantastic that Zlatan wants to give all Malmö residents the chance to have this unique experience and it is a given that we on the city council will help to realise this,” said Frida Trollmyr, head of the leisure committee.

But Malmö fans should not get their hopes up too much yet. Permission from the police and the council's infrastructure committee is required before a similar event can take place, and both said just after 1pm on Friday that they had yet to receive an application.

“But it's a great idea, to give back to Malmö in this way,” police spokesperson Christer Rindmo told the newspaper. “But it's maybe not as much fun when we bureaucrats come into the picture.”

SHOOTINGS

US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success

The US criminologist behind the anti-gang strategy designed to reduce the number of shootings and explosions in Malmö has credited the city and its police for the "utterly pragmatic, very professional, very focused" way they have put his ideas into practice.

Published: 8 March 2021 16:12 CET
US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success
Johan Nilsson/TT

In an online seminar with Malmö mayor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said implementing his Group Violence Intervention (GVI) strategy had gone extremely smoothly in the city.

“What really stands out about the Malmö experience is contrary to most of the places we work,” he said. “They made their own assessment of their situation on the ground, they looked at the intervention logic, they decided it made sense, and then, in a very rapid, focused and business-like fashion, they figured out how to do the work.”

He said that this contrasted with police and other authorities in most cities who attempt to implement the strategy, who tend to end up “dragging their feet”, “having huge amounts of political infighting”, and coming up with reasons why their city is too different from other cities where the strategy has been a success.

Malmö’s Sluta Skjut (Stop Shooting) pilot scheme was extended to a three-year programme this January, after its launch in 2018 coincided with a reduction in the number of shootings and explosions in the city.

“We think it’s a good medicine for Malmö for breaking the negative trend that we had,” Malmö police chief Stefan Sintéus said, pointing to the fall from 65 shootings in 2017 to 20 in 2020, and in explosions from 62 in 2017 to 17 in 2020.

A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of shootings from 2017 to 2020. Graph: Malmö Police
A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of explosions in the city between 2017 and 2020. Graph: Malmö Police

READ ALSO: 

In their second evaluation of the programme, published last month, Anna-Karin Ivert, Caroline Mellgren, and Karin Svanberg, three criminologists from Malmö University, reported that violent crime had declined significantly since the program came into force, and said that it was possible that the Sluta Skjut program was partly responsible, although it was difficult to judge exactly to what extent. 

The number of shootings had already started to decline before the scheme was launched, and in November 2019, Sweden’s national police launched Operation Rimfrost, a six-month crackdown on gang crime, which saw Malmö police reinforced by officers from across Sweden.

But Kennedy said he had “very little sympathy” for criminologists critical of the police’s decision to launch such a massive operation at the same time as Sluta Skjut, making it near impossible to evaluate the programme.

“Evaluation is there to improve public policy, public policy is not there to provide the basis for for sophisticated evaluation methodology,” he argued.

“When people with jobs to do, feel that they need to do things in the name of public safety, they should follow their professional, legal and moral judgement. Not doing something to save lives, because it’s going to create evaluation issues, I think, is simply privileging social science in a way that it doesn’t deserve.”

US criminologist David Kennedy partaking in the meeting. Photo: Richard Orange

Sluta Skjut has been based around so-called ‘call-ins’, in which known gang members on probation are asked to attend meetings, where law enforcement officials warn them that if shootings and explosions continue, they and the groups around them will be subject to intense focus from police.

At the same time, social workers and other actors in civil society offer help in leaving gang life.

Of the 250-300 young men who have been involved in the project, about 40 have been sent to prison, while 49 have joined Malmö’s ‘defector’ programme, which helps individuals leave gangs.

Kennedy warned not to focus too much on the number of those involved in the scheme who start to work with social services on leaving gang life.

“What we find in in practice is that most of the impact of this approach doesn’t come either because people go to prison or because they take services and leave gang life,” he said.

“Most of the impact comes from people simply putting their guns down and no longer being violent.”

“We think of the options as continuing to be extremely dangerous, or completely turning one’s life around. That’s not realistic in practice. Most of us don’t change that dramatically ever in our lives.”

He stressed the importance of informal social control in his method, reaching those who gang members love and respect, and encouraging them to put pressure on gang members to abstain from gun violence.

“We all care more about our mothers than we care about the police, and it turns out that if you can find the guy that this very high risk, very dangerous person respects – literally, you know, little old ladies will go up to him and get his attention and tell him to behave himself. And he will.”

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