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CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

CHAMPIONS

Malmö face real fight from Spanish heroes

UPDATED: Swedish champions Malmö take on Real Madrid in the Champions League on Wednesday. The Spanish giants are confident, but could the Nordic underdogs show up their southern European rivals as they compete for the first time?

Published: 29 September 2015 11:51 CEST
Updated: 29 September 2015 16:51 CEST
Malmö face real fight from Spanish heroes
Malmö training ahead of the clash with Real Madrid. Photo: Drago PrvulovicTT.jpg
Real Madrid have never played against a Swedish side, while Malmö has only played and lost against Atlético.
 
So sports commentators are already rushing to preview the unique fixture at the Swedbank Stadium in southern Sweden.
 
“Shoestring Swedes hope to upset mighty Madrid,” wrote the Reuters news agency on Tuesday.
 
Eurosport commented: “It's a David vs Goliath Champions League clash – and we all love those.”
 
It added: “Either Cristiano Ronaldo and company put on a glorious exhibition, or Malmö keep us on the edge of our seats with an exceptional performance to maintain an unexpected scoreline for all or much of the contest. It's a win-win!”
 
Malmö, the Swedish champions, are competing in the UEFA Champions League group stage for a second successive season having made their debut in 2014/15.
 
The Nordic side raised eyebrows with an impressive 2-0 win over Scottish giants Celtic in the play-off stage, but were crushed 2-0 by Paris side PSG in their first match of the contest.
 
Last season they finished bottom of their Champions League group, losing five out of six games.
 
Meanwhile Real Madrid have won 13 of their last 14 Champions League group games.
 
Their star striker Cristiano Ronaldo is just two goals shy of matching Raul's 323-goal record as Madrid's top goalscorer of all time.
 
However, he has been made to wait for his historic moment after failing to find the net in La Liga meetings against Granada, Athletic Bilbao and Malaga in the past 10 days.
 
Rafael Benitez's men have now been held scoreless twice in their opening six La Liga fixtures, but the former Liverpool and Chelsea boss is confident the goals will come for the Spanish legends as they take on the Scandinavians.
 
“Creating so many chances seems positive to me, but preventing opportunities on the counter-attack is something that we need to correct as well as managing the anxiety at the end of games,” he said ahead of the game.
 
However, he confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that he had not included top players Gareth Bale, James Rodriguez, Sergio Ramos or Pepe in his 20-man squad for the clash with Malmö.
 
With Real having won their opening encounter in Group A 4-0 against Shakhtar Donetsk, the manager appeared not to want to risk any of his star names in Sweden.
 

Malmö's goalie Johan Wiland. Photo: Andreas Hillergren/TT
 
Malmö goalkeeper Johan Wiland is the man tasked with the unenviable job of stopping a Madrid side desperate to make amends for the weekend, but the 34-year-old is relishing the opportunity to face the world's best.
 
“I love games where I have a lot to do,” he told Malmö FF's website.
 
“You have to make the best of it. It also feels special when the Champions League song goes on. I think you can ask Ronaldo and he would say the same thing.
 
“You have to go out there and enjoy it. I have told all of the players that, but we should also do the job. We are a very good football team and we have a chance.”

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

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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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