The Cancelled Game

What the German authorities generally say from the cancellation of the Germany-Netherlands soccer game.....is that some intelligence came to them from a foreign intelligence service (might be the English, might be France, might be NSA, but it's not German-derived).  What I found interesting from this comment from the Bavarian Interior Minister (Joachim Herrmann) is that it would be at a sporting event in Germany within the next 48 hours.

This event.....might not be the England-Netherlands game.  There's a game planned for Dortmund-Hamburg on Friday night (8:30 local).  That's the next major league game in Germany.  For Saturday, there are four games at the national level.

The rumor of a bomb found in an ambulance?  Bogus.

So, in the end....the authorities got pretty nervous and estimated the problem to be real.  The effect of the cancellation?  They told everyone around the stadium (this was around one hour prior to the start of the game) to get up and leave the area.....not to waste time....get back home and avoid staying around public stations/places.

Based on interviews last night with local via state-run TV news.....they were understanding of the situation, a bit peeved, and accepting of it.

From Focus, they say....this information that got people unsettled refers to some Iraqi-ISIS sleeper agent thug who lived out of Weserbergland.   Focus cites a report from "Die Welt" that the guy's name came up....referring to him as 'dangerous', and that he was in the local region.

This guy apparently has some 'gang' of North Africans and there was some belief that they were up to some attack plan.

Bottom line?  The game will be discussed and possibly rescheduled.  If they decided to put it back onto a schedule....that will interfere greatly with the German and Dutch soccer schedule.

The public is saddled now with this view that "they are here", in terms of ISIS terrorists on German soil. All of this is a reminder of the immigration-asylum-refugee affair and will weigh in a negative sense on German perception of the way ahead.  If there were still people on the border-line of supporting the Merkel policy....this probably will interfere with their marginal support, and be a major part of the 2016 state election talk here in Germany.