Mohammed Asad / AP

An injured security official is carried from a police officers club in an upscale Cairo neighborhood, after fires were set by protesters angry about death sentences imposed on soccer fans over a deadly riot.

Egyptian protesters torched buildings in Cairo and tried unsuccessfully to disrupt international shipping on the Suez Canal, as a court ruling on a deadly soccer riot stoked rage in a country beset by worsening security.

The ruling enraged residents of Port Said, at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, by confirming death sentences imposed on 21 local soccer fans for their role in the riot last year when more than 70 people were killed.

But the court also angered rival fans in Cairo by acquitting a further 28 defendants that they wanted punished, including seven members of the police force which is reviled across society for its brutality under deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Security sources said one person had died in Cairo from the effects of tear gas and 65 people were injured, some by rubber bullets.

Saturday's protests and violence underlined how Islamist President Mohamed Mursi is struggling - two years after Mubarak's overthrow - to maintain law and order at a time of economic and political crisis.

On Thursday Egypt's election committee scrapped a timetable under which voting for the lower house of parliament should have begun next month, following a court ruling that threw the entire polling process into confusion.

The stadium riot took place last year at the end of a match in Port Said between local side Al-Masry and Cairo's Al-Ahly team. Spectators were crushed when panicked crowds tried to escape from the stadium after a pitch invasion by Al-Masry supporters. Others fell or were thrown from terraces.

Judge Sobhy Abdel Maguid, listing the names of the 21 Al-Masry fans, said the Cairo court had confirmed "the death penalty by hanging". He also sentenced five more people to life imprisonment while others out of a total of 73 defendants received shorter terms.

In Cairo, local Al-Ahly fans vented their rage at the acquittals, setting fire to a police social club, the nearby offices of the Egyptian soccer federation and a branch of a fast food chain, sending smoke rising over the capital.

A military helicopter scooped up water from the nearby Nile and dropped it on the burning buildings.

"Ultra" fans, the section of Al-Ahly supporters responsible for much of the violence, said they awaited retribution for those who had planned the Port Said "massacre".

"What is happening today in Cairo is the beginning of the anger. Wait for more if the remaining elements embroiled in this massacre are not revealed," the Ultras said in a statement.

PROTESTERS TARGET CANAL

Mohamed Muslemany / NBC News

A man rescues soccer trophies from the Egyptian Football Association after the building was torched by angry soccer fans.

In Port Said, where the army took over security in the city center from the police on Friday, about 2,000 residents who want the local fans spared from execution blockaded ferries crossing the Suez Canal. Witnesses said youths also untied moored speedboats used to supply shipping on the waterway, hoping the boats would drift into the path of passing vessels.

Military police recovered five speedboats and brought them back to shore, but two were still drifting, one witness said.

Authorities controlling the Canal, an artery for global trade and major income source for the Egyptian government, said through traffic had not been affected. "The canal ... is safe and open to all ships passing through it," Suez Canal Authority spokesman Tarek Hassanein told the MENA news agency.

The canal is a major employer in Port Said and, until now, protesters had declared it off-limits for the demonstrations apart from on one occasion when red balloons marked "SOS" were floated into the waterway.

In a separate security threat, the Interior Ministry ordered police in the Sinai peninsula to raise their state of emergency after receiving intelligence that jihadists might attack their forces there, MENA reported.

Officials have expressed growing worries about security in the desert region which borders Israel and is home to a number of tourist resorts. In August last year Islamist militant gunmen killed at least 15 Egyptian policemen in an assault on a police station on the border with Israel, before seizing two military vehicles and attempting to storm the frontier.

Last Thursday, Bedouin gunmen briefly held the head of U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in Egypt and his wife. The Britons, who had been heading for a Sinai resort, were released unharmed.

General unrest is rife as the Egypt's poor suffer badly from the economic crisis. Foreign currency reserves have slid to critically low levels and are now little more than a third of what they were in the last days of Mubarak.

The Egyptian pound has lost 14 percent against the dollar since the 2011 revolution and the budget deficit is soaring to unmanageable levels due to the huge cost of fuel and food subsidies. Egypt agreed a $4.8 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund last November, but Cairo requested a delay due to street violence the following month.

Analysts say the chances of an IMF deal are slim until the electoral chaos is sorted out, but question how much longer the government can hold out without international funding.

Unrest has plagued Port Said since the death sentences were first handed down to the Al-Masry supporters in January, with locals fighting pitched battles with police. At least eight people have been killed this week, including three policemen.

The Cairo court also jailed two senior police officers for 15 years on Saturday for their handling of the riot.

However, some fans in Cairo were happy with the confirmation of the death sentences. "This is a just verdict and has calmed us all down. Our martyrs have been vindicated," Said Sayyid, 21, told Reuters.

Related:

At least 30 die in clashes over Egypt soccer disaster verdict

'People are dying in front of us': Scores killed in riots after Egypt soccer match

This story was originally published on Sat Mar 9, 2013 4:12 AM EST

Clive Brunskill / Getty Images, file

Gary Jones, left, and James "Big Jim" Hanson of Bradford City FC celebrate following their team's victory over English Premier League club Arsenal on Dec. 11, 2012. Only three years ago, Hanson was stacking shelves at a local supermarket. On Sunday, he'll play in front of 90,000 people at London's iconic Wembley Stadium.

Updated at 3:05 p.m. ET on Feb. 24: Bradford City FC lost 5-0 to Swansea.

BRADFORD, England -- It is the sort of "fairy tale" story that sounds made for Hollywood. 

Led by the unlikeliest of heroes, a passionate team of underdogs emerges from the shadow of near-bankruptcy to go an improbable winning streak, eliminating a series of big-name (and huge-budgeted) rivals and bringing hope to their poverty-stricken hometown.

But the real-life story of Bradford City Football Club might be too unbelievable for even the most cliche-loving studio exec who's watched "Hoosiers" and  "The Bad News Bears" one too many times.

Assembled for just $10,000, the team's extraordinary exploits have spirits soaring in the Yorkshire city and far beyond.

Currently lying in 79th place out of the 92 top clubs in England, Bradford City will on Sunday contest a national cup final after a succession of thrilling, giant-killing triumphs over teams including Arsenal, the London-based club valued at $1.5 billion last year.

One of Bradford's biggest stars was stacking shelves in a local supermarket not long ago. Now James "Big Jim" Hanson will find himself playing in front of 90,000 fans at London's iconic Wembley Stadium and a television audience of millions.

A representative of the Dalai Lama even wrote a letter to say the exiled Tibetan religious leader wished Bradford City's fans "every success in the big match." 

Courtesy Friends of Bradford City / Yorkshire International Business Center

The Dalai Lama was presented with a Bradford City FC jersey during a recent visit to Yorkshire.

Lying in wait for "The Bantams" will be Swansea City, currently eighth in the top English league, and its star striker, Miguel Michu.

Michu is third in the Premier League in goals this season and Swansea's manager has warned rivals it would take $47 million in compensation for the club to let him leave. By contrast, Bradford are currently 11th in the fourth level of English professional soccer.

Mark Lawn, Bradford City's co-chairman, can hardly believe the transformation in fortunes that has seen Bradford reach the Capital One Cup final -- a competition traditionally known as the League Cup.

The self-made businessman put money into the 110-year-old club to help it survive after debts of about $55 million saw it threatened with bankruptcy at least twice. It has been "a labor of love" that at times prompted him to question his own sanity.

'We've created history'
Lawn, 52, recalled vomiting on the team bus on the way back from a defeat at Morecambe amid fears the club was on the verge of financial collapse. After another loss, his car was attacked by angry Bradford City fans.

"It's not really sunk in," Lawn said. "We are the only fourth-tier team to get to Wembley ever. We've created history. The town is buzzing. It's amazing … it's just lifting the town."

"It's nearly got me believing in God again. I lost faith in God or religion in general when I lost my mother and father," he added. "I thought if we win then there's got to be summat ('something' in the Yorkshire dialect). I've said if we did do it, I will look at finding religion again."

Sitting in the club's 1911 room -- named for the year the club last won a major trophy -- Lawn played down his team's chances.

"I just hope Swansea are easy with us … They are a great side," he said. "I think they'll beat us, being realistic. But it's not about that for Bradford fans and Bradford City."

Once a thriving industrial city, Bradford is now one of the most deprived places in the U.K. Nearly a quarter of all households are jobless, long-term youth unemployment rates are soaring, local government spending is being cut dramatically.

Lawn grew up in Bradford's rundown Thorpe Edge area, where many houses are owned by the local government and rented out cheaply, and recalled as a child sneaking in to watch the team play without paying.

Thorpe Edge is a place with few reasons to celebrate. Annice Brearley, an outreach worker at Thorpe Edge Community Project, runs a program for children in which they wash cars and pack bags in local stores to raise money for trips to parts of England they would otherwise be unable to visit.

The neighborhood, she said, was "not a wealthy place … there's a lot of people who don't have much."

But Brearley, 46, said that the team's soccer success has "nobody thinking about stuff like that." She spent 11-and-a-half hours in line to buy a ticket for the final. 

"It's something like 102 years since anything good like this [the 1911 cup win] happened in Bradford," she said. "Nobody thinks Bradford City is going to lose. We're all really positive. It will be a brilliant day."

Not far from Thorpe Edge is the small Co-operative supermarket where hometown hero Hanson stacked shelves for two years before joining the club in 2009. 

"He used to work at the Co-op" has become a chant among supporters.

Ian Johnston / NBC News

Staff at the Co-op supermarket in Idle Village, Bradford -- Elisa Taylor, 24, her mother Ruth Taylor, and Jeanette McDonald -- will be cheering for former colleague James Hanson in Sunday's Capital One Cup final.

Former colleague Ruth Taylor said Hanson was "really lovely, a really gentle, nice lad."

"He always talked about his football," she recalled. "He loved it. We knew he were going to make it."

She insisted the 25-year-old striker would not choke after stepping into the national spotlight. "He takes it all in his stride, he's quite a laidback chap is James."

"I think he'll be really excited. It's like a big dream come true for him. He deserves it so much." she added. "They haven't had a lot to celebrate recently have Bradford. This would be a great morale booster, especially for this area. It would just go crazy."

Hannah Postles, 27, a journalist with Bradford's Telegraph & Argus newspaper, has been covering the growing excitement in the city in articles and a live blog.

'Big, burly men crying'
She recounted going to a bar to report on people watching the second of two semi-final games against top-tier Aston Villa on television.

"In the last four minutes, I swear I didn't breathe. It was so close, and you could see Villa firing on all cylinders," Postles said. After the final whistle, the emotion came. "Big, burly Bradford men crying is not something you see very often."

"It's hard not to find yourself getting swept up in it," she said. "It's been a massive inspiration to everyone in Bradford."

Her blog for the paper has been filled with reports of fans traveling from all over the world to attend Sunday's game. 

One, Mike Hitch, a ship's captain originally from Bradford, said he was planning to spend more than 21 hours in the air to fly halfway around the world from Tahiti to watch the game. 

"This will never happen again in my lifetime," the 46-year-old said Thursday by phone from the Pacific island. "If anything goes wrong, then I'll be looking for a sports bar in an airport."

Jon Super / AP, file

Bradford City supporters take to the stands before their fourth-tier team's win against English giants Arsenal on Dec. 11.

Bradford City beat six teams to get to the final, reaching the quarter-finals by triumphing over Premier League team Wigan on penalties after a 0-0 draw. They then drew 1-1 against Arsenal but were victorious in the penalty shootout.

The semi-final against Aston Villa consisted of two games, ending in a 4-3 aggregate victory for Bradford.

Bradford City FC manager Phil Parkinson said that although his players earned "peanuts" compared to counterparts on the Premier League teams they had knocked out of the competition, they possessed "incredible desire."

"Bradford has had some tough times over the last few years -- and not just the football club but the city," he added. "People are now walking around with a spring in their step."

The unlikely success has left many Bradford fans confident of another victory on Sunday.

"We haven’t come this far not to win it,"  said Mark Neale, a member of fundraising group Friends of Bradford City who has supported the team for 50 years. 

But he said that "the mere fact they've got to Wembley means this team of players will always be legends in Bradford."

"There's not a lot of pride in Bradford, but the pride in Bradford City (soccer club) is immense and it's rubbing off on people who are not normally interested in football," said Neale, 59.

Alan Carling, of Bradford City Supporters' Trust, said they had beaten three Premier League clubs "so we are not phased by a fourth. Bring it on."

"Everyone has been going round Bradford with a big grin on their face. City's achievements have caught the imagination of the world, and lifted the image of Bradford, which is often subject to condescension from southern England," he added.

But people with little connection to the area have also been attracted by success of a true underdog. 

Carling said he was interviewed by a Japanese television crew on Wednesday, while Neale received the letter from the Dalai Lama ahead of the game. 

Neale's supporters' group had previously presented the Buddhist spiritual leader with a Bradford jersey while he was in the area, after noticing the similarity between the team's colors and his robes.

In a telephone interview, Tenzin Taklha, one of the Dalai Lama’s secretaries in Dharamsala, India, said while His Holiness was "not really" a soccer fan, Bradford's success was "a fairy tale." 

"Everyone likes these stories and likes to follow that,” he said. "May the best team win … we’ll keep our fingers crossed."

Alex Grimm / Bongarts via Getty Images

Fans of the German soccer team Kaiserslautern hold up Israeli flags to protest against anti-Semitism prior to the Bundesliga match between FC Kaiserslautern and VfL Wolfsburg in March last year.

Nearly seven decades after the Holocaust, young soccer fans in Germany have become targets of neo-Nazis who preach the hatred of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

“Again and again we see neo-Nazi presence in [sports] fan clubs and my office asks that action be taken against them,” said Winfriede Schreiber, head of the Brandenburg branch of the German government’s intelligence service. “For example, we see the fan club in [the German city] Cottbus consisting of a lot of neo-Nazis. We asked the football club to do something about this.”

At her office in Brandenburg, a state in eastern Germany, Schreiber monitors extremism and reports evidence of hate crimes to prosecutors.

“The neo-Nazis now look like everyone else,” Schreiber said. “Gone are the jackboots and black leather jackets that used to make it easy to expose them. Now they blend into the local population.”

According to Schreiber, the neo-Nazis subscribe to Hitler’s views and extol his one-time deputy, Rudolf Hess.

“The danger the neo-Nazis pose is that they are against democracy and they work to alienate young people from democracy,” she said. “They have made ‘Juden’ [Jews] a curse word even if there are no Jews playing on the soccer field.”

Jens Teschke, a spokesman for Germany's interior ministry, which is responsible for domestic security, said neo-Nazi activities are visible throughout Germany, but strongest in the country's east.

“Neo-Nazis take young soccer fans to homes built in the Nazi times as holiday retreats for elite members of Hitler’s party,” Teschke said. “They laud the Nazi era and the legacy of this era.”

According to Teschke, the German government launched programs in January 2011 to make soccer coaches more aware of neo-Nazi tactics.

The problem is not limited to Germany. 

In England, fans of London-based Tottenham Hotspur -- which boasts a strong Jewish following -- have been subjected to anti-Semitic abuse for many years. In November, supporters of West Ham United "hissed on several occasions, mocking the mass execution of Jews during the Second World War," the U.K.'s Telegraph newspaper reported. "While the hissing, shamefully, is nothing new, Tottenham fans were also subjected to a chant of 'Adolf Hitler, he's coming for you.'"

Only days earlier, an American college student suffered a foot-long stab wound and a punctured lung when a mob of up to 50 masked men armed with knives and baseball bats attacked Tottenham Hotspur fans before a Europa League match in Rome.

Witnesses told local media that the attackers shouted "Jews, Jews" as they laid siege to the bar. 

"The coordinated attack ... appears to have been motivated at least in part by anti-Semitism," the Telegraph reported.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center also recently highlighted the issue's growth. "The problem of anti-Semitic abuse at soccer matches which until recently has been limited to Eastern Europe, has been revived in Western Europe," it said in a report.

Prime targets of anti-Semitism on the soccer field are the Makkabi teams, Jewish athletic clubs located in 15 German cities.

“Every Makkabi team in Germany is confronted with anti-Semitism, as are teams with Jewish roots,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Berlin, an advocacy group.

Soccer coach Claudio Oppenberg, who is Jewish, said his team also faced anti-Semitism from Muslim immigrants.

According to Oppenberg, who’s coached Tus Makkabi Berlin for seven years, only two members of the current team are Jewish. The rest are from North Africa and Turkey.

During a game last March, Oppenberg said members of a Turkish team shouted at fellow Turks on the Makkabi team: “How can you play for these damned Jews?”

The Turkish team beat the Makkabis 1-0. Oppenberg said the Turkish coach confronted him after the game and said: “We f---d you Jews.” 

Oppenberg filed charges with the German Football Federation and the Turkish coach was suspended for a year.

“If you have racism and anti-Semitism in society, then you will have it in football too,” said Alex Feuerherdt, a soccer referee and freelance writer.

Donald Snyder, a veteran NBC News producer for more than 25 years, is a special correspondent for NBCNews.com. 

Related:

Hatred boils over in Israeli soccer

Holocaust archive rescues lost identities, reunites family after decades

A retired teacher's courageous crusade: Tackling neo-Nazi hate

Nir Elias / Reuters

Fans of Beitar Jerusalem shout slogans during a soccer match against Bnei Sakhnin on Sunday amid controversy over Beitar's signing of two Muslim players.

The Beitar Jerusalem club has long been known for its fans' racist chants, but the situation escalated dramatically last month after the team signed Zaur Sadayev and Gabriel Kadiev, two Muslim players from Chechnya.

The most outspoken wave of hate comes from a hardcore section of supporters – known as La Familia -- who see themselves as Beitar’s real owners.

“Death to the Arabs,” they yell during matches. “Beitar, pure forever,” they declare.

Rocks have been thrown at players and, during a recent practice, a fan ran onto the soccer field and tried to attack one of the new Muslim players.

Nir Elias / Reuters

Beitar Jerusalem's new player Gabriel Kadiev, a Muslim player from Chechnya, (right) is seen in action during the game.

The most shocking incident happened on Feb. 8 when the 76-year-old Beitar clubhouse -- home to the club’s trophies -- was burned to the ground. Extremist fans are suspected.

After this, team management and the government decided to take a hard line.

“The police are taking this very seriously,” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said.  “People who would burn an office are not fans, they are dangerous criminals.”

Abir Sutan / EPA

Meir Harush, one of the board members of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, looks over the damage after a fire destroyed the club's history room on Feb. 8. Right-wing extremist fans opposed to a decision by the club owner to sign two Muslim Chechen players are thought to have been responsible.

Bernat Armangue / AP

Burned soccer club trophies won by Beitar Jerusalem are seen after the fire.

Beitar chairman Itzik Kornfein pledged to hold firm too, according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot.

“We took an important step and we’re moving forward. In the end, all the fans will understand that this is a done deal and there’s no turning back,” he said, referring to the signing of the Muslim players.

“No turning back” took the form of 400 police officers and 200 private security guards sent to secure a Feb. 10 game between Beitar and the Arab-Israeli club Bnei Sakhnin.

Bernat Armangue / AP

Players Zaur Sadayev, center, and Gabriel Kadiev, background, seen after a press conference, have been subjected to abuse from their own fans.

Despite the security, some Beitar fans hurled abuse about Sadayev and Kadiev as well as the Arab team.

When Kadiev entered the game in the 79th minute, fans from La Familia cursed and booed him, but thousands of other supporters cheered him.

Abir Sultan / EPA

An Israeli fan of Beitar Jerusalem soccer team wearing an Israel flag during the game Sunday.

On the other side, fans from Bnei Sakhnin whistled during the Israeli national anthem.

Two Israeli and three Arab fans were arrested and are awaiting indictment for violent actions during the game.

Abir Sultan / EPA

Muslim supporters of the Hapoel Bnei Sakhnin football team cheer after their team scores in Sunday's game.

Bernat Armangue / AP

Israeli security forces detain Bnei Sakhnin supporters during a game against Beitar Jerusalem on Sunday.

Abir Sultan / EPA

Israeli border police stand guard during the game Sunday.

Phil Walter / Getty Images, file

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key reportedly defended his "gay" remark by saying it was "just a slang term" used by young people.

New Zealand's prime minister has been rebuked by "Lord of the Rings" actor Ian McKellen for joking about a radio host's "gay" sweater.

John Key teased broadcaster Jamie Mackay for wearing a red top instead of blue, the color of his National Party. “You've got that gay red top on there,” Key said in the interview on Friday.

It was reportedly the second gaffe on the same day for Key, who was accused of earlier telling an audience of students that LA Galaxy soccer player David Beckham was "thick as bats***."

Radio New Zealand said Key described Englishman Beckham as handsome and "a really nice guy" but "thick", according to a report in Britain’s Daily Telegraph.

Key refused to comment on the alleged slur on Beckham, but defended his "gay" remark by saying it was "just a slang term" used by young people, according to television news website TZ NZ.

"If someone was offended by it then I apologize but it's not exactly like a term you don't hear everywhere,” he said. "I voted for gay marriage, I'm hardly homophobic. I led the charge on it."

However, McKellen, the British actor and gay-rights campaigner who played Gandalf in the New Zealand-filmed "Lord of the Rings" franchise, said Key "should watch his language."

In a blog post on Monday, he wrote: "I'm currently touring secondary schools in UK, attacking homophobia in the playground and discouraging kids from the careless use of 'gay' which might make their gay friends (and teachers) feel less about themselves. So even as he supports the proposal to introduce same-gender marriages in New Zealand, I do hope John Key listens to his critics and appreciates their concern. Careless talk damages lives."

Australia’s Herald Sun reported that Twitter users criticized Key, calling his "gay" remarks homophobic and his comments about Beckham embarrassing.

Twitter user Guy Williams posted: “John Key is quickly becoming to New Zealand what Borat was to Kazakhstan.”

The Herald Sun also reported that radio host Mackay had dismissed the exchange as "nothing more than harmless banter".

"It's a storm in a teacup... no wonder the media sometimes gets a bad name," Mackay added.

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Britain's government has written to European soccer authorities demanding "tough sanctions" against Serbia after racist chants - including monkey noises - were heard at an international match with England on Tuesday night.

Abuse was hurled at black members of the England Under-21 team in Krusevac, Serbia, according to England officials. The match ended in a series of angry tussles between players on on both sides.

Monkey chants, which the England team captain said came from Serb supporters, were audible on above ambient crowd noise.

British sports Minister Hugh Robertson said Wednesday the scenes at the end of the game were "disgraceful."

"I have written to [Union of European Football Associations] President Michel Platini ... urging them to investigate immediately," he said.

Trouble quickly escalated when Serbia's players and officials started attacking their England counterparts, in scenes broadcast on a British sports channel.

The monkey chants could clearly be heard in clips uploaded to YouTube as black England defender Danny Rose was penalized for kicking the ball into the crowd in frustration. It was not clear where the noise had come from.

Read more on this story at ITV News

Rose, who had been standing apart from the main group of players after trouble broke out, mimicked a monkey by sticking his arms underneath his armpits to demonstrate the racial nature of the abuse he could hear.

A spokesman for  Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron, said he was "appalled" at the scenes, while Rose's father told ITV News he wanted Serbia banned from European soccer.

In a statement, England Under-21 captain, Jordan Henderson, said: "There was a lot of racist abuse out there from the stands. There was also stones, coins and seats getting thrown at us.”

The Football Association of Serbia also issued a statement, placing the blame on Rose, who, they said, behaved "in inappropriate, unsportsmanlike and vulgar manner towards the supporters on the stands at the stadium in Krusevac."

Serbian player Milos Ninkovic, left, and England's Danny Rose, right, and Craig Dawson, center, clash during the match.

The statement went on to say: “FA of Serbia absolutely refuses and denies that there were any occurrences of racism before and during the match at the stadium in Krusevac.”

Serbia’s soccer fans are notorious for causing trouble at home and abroad. The European governing body,  UEFA, awarded Italy a 3-0 win over Serbia after a qualifier in Genoa, Italy, in 2010 was stopped when Serbia supporters threw flares and fireworks onto the field, burned a flag and broke barriers.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. ITV News is the UK partner of NBC News. 

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Rafal Guz / EPA

Polish and Russian fans clash during a march of Russian supporters to the National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland on Tuesday prior to the Group A preliminary round match of the UEFA EURO 2012 between Poland and Russia.

Peter Andrews / Reuters

Polish soccer fans shout at Russian supporters as they walk protected by Polish riot police in Warsaw on Tuesday.

Rafal Guz / EPA

Police intervene as Polish and Russian fans clash during a march of Russian supporters to the National Stadium in Warsaw.

Jerzy Dudek / Reuters

A Polish soccer shows a wound from a rubber bullet during clashes with police and Russian fans in Warsaw.

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Polish goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny jumps to intercept the ball during the Euro 2012 football championships match Poland vs. Greece, on Tuesday, June 8.

Pawel Supernak / EPA

Polish supporters cheer their team during the opening match of the UEFA EURO 2012 soccer championship between Poland and Greece at the Fan Zone in downtown Warsaw, Poland, Friday, June 8.

The European Championship got started today in Warsaw with opening ceremonies and a first match with host country Poland competing against Greece.

Read about today's match which ended in a draw, 1-1.

Vassil Donev / EPA

A Polish fan waiting for the start of Group A preliminary round opening match of the UEFA EURO 2012 between Poland and Greece in Warsaw, Poland, Friday, June 8.

Leonhard Foeger / Reuters

Performers take part in the opening ceremony of the Euro 2012 soccer tournament ahead of the Group A match between Poland and Greece at the National Stadium in Warsaw, Friday, June 8.

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An Ukrainian fan react as he watchs the Euro 2012 football championships match Poland vs Greece on a giant screen in the fan zone at Independence Square in Kiev on Friday, June 8.

Andrzej Grygiel / EPA

Cardiosurgery department at the St. Barbara Voivodship Specialist Hospital are celebrating the first goal during the Group A preliminary round opening match of the UEFA EURO 2012 between Poland and Greece, in Sosnowiec, Poland, Friday, June 8.

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