Police authorities in Lamia were put on alert after two cars with French license plates were spotted driving on the National Highway and, according to passing drivers, the occupants behaved defiantly. So the police proceeded to check if they were hooligans.
However, during the checks, it was found that the passengers of the two cars were members of a group that had a recreational meeting in Greece and not hooligans of Olympique de Marseille.
There was also the Greek flag in one of the two cars. According to Lamia Report, the passengers were six men and two women who cooperated with the police. As soon as their documents were checked, they continued their journey.
The search for the French tourists comes as a 29-year-old fan was killed in overnight clashes between rival supporters in the Greek capital, prompting European governing soccer body UEFA to postpone a Champions League qualifying game between AEK Athens and Croatia's Dinamo Zagreb on Tuesday.
Amateur video of the incident showed chaotic scenes, with fans hurling flares and petrol bombs and clashing with wooden bats.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic called his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis to express his condemnation of the violence, with the Croatian government describing the clashes as "horrific."
Fans gathered at the site of the fan's death Tuesday, leaving flowers, church candles and black-and-yellow AEK soccer scarves at the makeshift roadside shrine.
Near the makeshift shrine, police cordoned off an area to gather evidence, pulling a wooden bat and other items from a dumpster.
After the fan's death, Greek authorities requested that all supporters be excluded from the match at the Opap Arena.
Dinamo fans were officially already excluded under a previous ruling by UEFA. AEK fan Kyriakos Mantzakidis, who runs a sports blog, said police should have prevented scores of Croatian fans from travelling to Athens.
"This was a murderous attack against ordinary people. Many people gathered in this area were not soccer fans," Mantzakidis said. "It is a failure of the government to plan properly ... it was a good decision to postpone the game. The atmosphere was too tense."
READ MORE: Dinamo Zagreb and Pao hooligans accuse each other of starting violence that killed 29-year-old AEK fan.
