Germany v Netherlands friendly cancelled after ‘concrete terrorist threat

The German team had already been shaken after spending last Friday night in the Stade de France as their global friendly took place during scenes of violence across Paris.

At London’s Wembley Stadium, a moving rendition of the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise”, reverberated around the ground as players and fans from both England and France paid tribute to Friday’s victims.

The stadium was hosting a match between Germany and the Netherlands.

German politicians urged the public not to be cowed by the threat of Islamist attacks and said a concrete indication of a security threat had led them to cancel Tuesday’s soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands.

Announcements at the Hanover stadium advised people to go home in a calm manner, and that there was no danger.

Quoting an official paper said to have come from the Bundesverfassungsschutz (officially “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution” in English), Bild said that security services assumed the leading attacker planned to film the intended attack in the stadium. Authorities said they found no explosives at the stadium.

Security was very tight, with police armed with machine guns surrounding the stadium and maintaining a very obvious presence in the city.

No arrests were made and spectators who had arrived at the stadium ahead of the match were told to evacuate the premises.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere was meeting with local counterpart Boris Pistorius late Tuesday when more background details were to be given at a news conference.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel and members of the German cabinet were expected to have been among the guests at the match.

It is the second venue to be evacuated in the area coming after the HDI Arena in Hannover was evacuated earlier in the evening.

“The first vice-president of the DFB has a lot of tasks but he is not the official speaker of the police department”, Koch said.

Safety fears intensified in Europe on Tues.as German authorities scrambled to reply to a reported bomb plot & French investigators uncovered clues suggesting the Islamic State cell in that started last week’s devastating assaults in Paris was larger than previously known.

“That our team would twice in four days have to experience this kind of tragic event is something that previously I could never have imagined”, German soccer official Reinhard Rauball said. He said they had been taken to a “safe place” and that he could not disclose any more information.