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The original was posted on /r/soccer by /u/kebabdj2 on 2025-07-29 08:28:18+00:00.

Translation of the article:

Just before 11:30 AM on Monday, the police reported that a referee was assaulted by a spectator at the Norway Cup in Oslo.

– The injury is considered serious. The referee is said to have been struck in the head, reported operations manager Per-Ivar Iversen.

The assistant referee, a man in his 50s, was taken to the emergency room by ambulance.

One man was arrested after the incident. The arrested man is a Spanish citizen in his 20s who is said to have been a spectator at the match, according to the police.

The man has been charged with bodily harm and is in custody, informed police attorney Vibeke Stolp Ekeland to VG.

Ekeland states that the man’s detention will be reviewed on Tuesday.

– The defendant admits to having struck the assistant referee, said the man’s defense attorney, Ola Lunde, to VG on Monday evening.

Lunde also says he considers the assistant referee’s behavior before the strike to be highly blameworthy. However, the defense attorney states that he cannot elaborate on what lies behind his assessment at this time.

– Lying down for five minutes

VG interviewed the match’s head referee, who witnessed the incident. He does not wish to be named.

– The assistant referee was on the sidelines and tried to remove a spectator from the sideline, he tells us.

The situation escalated into an argument and a scuffle.

The referee is said to have said something that provoked the spectators, according to him.

The assistant referee was then struck in the face and fell to the ground, according to the referee.

– He lay down for five minutes, says the referee.

Initially, the police reported that the perpetrator had left the area. At 11:52 AM, the police reported that they had gained control of the perpetrator.

– It was a kind of scuffle, and then the referee was subjected to violence in that connection, said Mikael Dellemyr, the response leader on site after the incident.

The man was arrested for the risk of fleeing and taken to custody, according to the police.

– We need to investigate the case without him being able to leave the country, said Dellemyr.

The police spoke to several witnesses to the incident on Monday.

No grounds for sanctions

– This is a serious matter – having an assault on a referee is completely unacceptable, and that’s why the police have taken charge of the case, says jury chairman Kjartan Berland of Norway Cup to VG.

The match’s referee reported the incident to the jury, which was supposed to handle the case on Monday.

Later that evening, the jury of the Norway Cup announced that they found no grounds to sanction the Spanish team after the incident.

– We have concluded that there are no grounds to sanction the Spanish team because the incident took place in a match that the Spanish team was not playing in but were waiting for their own game, says Berland to VG.

He further points out that the man who is now charged with violence was a spectator:

– The police are handling the case further, while we are adhering to football’s regulations for what happens on the field.

The jury has also deemed it appropriate to send information about the incident to the Norwegian Football Association, given the seriousness of the situation.

Zero tolerance for violence

VG has been in contact with the coach of Fløy-Flekkerøy IL, Fredrik Skaar Manneråk. He says that his team was supposed to play against the team involved in the incident.

– The game didn’t start. We notified that we would not send our players in when the match had such an entrance.

Manneråk does not wish to comment on what happened or what his team witnessed at this time.

– We’d rather focus on the sporting side and have zero tolerance for violence, he says.

Later, Manneråk confirms to Dagbladet that they will not play the match, which was postponed to Monday evening.

This year, the Norway Cup is held from Saturday, July 26 to Saturday, August 2. As usual, the football tournament at Ekebergsletta is one of the world’s largest, with over 1,900 teams and nearly 30,000 participants between the ages of 6 and 19 from 35 different countries.