Soccer Hooligans Kick a Photographer in the Head and Spit on Another

A group of German soccer fans in Dublin, Ireland, assaulted one photographer and spat on another during unruly scenes on Saturday.

Documentary photographer Carly Clarke shared footage on X that shows her standing in the path of a marching group of soccer fans who are chanting and banging a drum. Clarke stands before them, taking photos.

But as they get near, one of them grabs Clarke’s camera. A colleague comes over to intervene, but he is thrown to the ground — and then kicked in the head.

The photographer who was pushed to the floor and kicked was Clarke’s friend Steve, who is 70 years old. “It’s not ok to try to attack a young woman or kick a 70-year-old man,” Clarke writes on X.

Spitting Incident

The soccer hooligans support the team FC Schalke 04 — one of Germany’s most historic and largest clubs, but one that now lingers in the country’s second-tier soccer league.

But unfortunately, the hardcore fans, also known as ultras, disgraced themselves again when they arrived for Schalke’s ‘friendly’ game against Irish team Bohemians.

TalkSport reports that photographer Darren O’Hanlon — who works for Bohemians — recorded a video of a Schalke fan walking up to him and spitting on him.

“What you see is what happened,” O’Hanlon writes on his Instagram Story. O’Hanlon explains that the German fans were doing “this call and respond thing” so decided to go to that part of the stadium to get photos.

O’Hanlon has a 360-degree camera attached to the top of his main camera, which he leaves running all the time.

“I just leave it running, and then I make TikToks and stuff out of it. So, I didn’t even see him. I was looking through my camera, I didn’t see him, I wasn’t taking pictures of him… I didn’t speak to him, he didn’t speak to me,” O’Hanlon says.

“He just walked up and spit on me, and I didn’t even realize what happened. It took about ten seconds, 15 seconds to go, ‘Did he f****** spit on me?’ And I realised there was spit on my cheek, I was like, ‘What the f***?'”

O’Hanlon says he has no idea why the fan spat on him, speculating that it could have been his camera or perhaps because he was representing the team Schalke was playing against. But he says he was “fuming” over the incident and had to leave to cool down.

Condemnations

Schalke issued a statement over the two incidents, calling them “completely unjustifiable.”

“This type of incident cast the club and our community in a light that is not fair to S04, nor to the thousands of peaceful Schalke fans,” the club says.

“The perception that this creates is damaging to the culture at the club and the identity of Schalke 04. We utterly condemn these incidents and, as announced, will rigorously investigate the events and take appropriate action.”