Refugees Welcome

St Pauli lead football's response to humanitarian crisis.

- James Montague

The players were led out hand in hand by the children of refugees as the crowd in all four stands stood to applaud. When the teams from Borussia Dortmund and St Pauli reached the middle of the pitch, the messages were raised too.

Homemade signs, some made out of ripped up cardboard boxes, next to flags and more professionally-made posters. Some were in English, some in German and a few in Arabic. Next to them, larger banners were unfurled that sent a message not just to fellow fans, the players and the clubs, but to the outside world.'

“No Border, No Nation,” read one. “Say It Loud, Say It Clear, Refugees Are Welcome Here!” read the biggest.

At present, Europe has been gripped by the worst refugee crisis since the end of the Second World War. Tens of thousands have arrived in Europe on a daily basis, the vast majority of which are fleeing the civil war in Syria, where over half the country has now been displaced.

As their numbers have grown, so has the political opposition and mistreatment at the hands of the authorities, especially in Hungary. But two moments have shifted the mood. The first was the discovery, in August, of a refrigerated truck, abandoned on a highway in Austria, crammed with the bodies of 71 refugees who had suffocated. The second was a picture of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian Kurd found dead, face down on a beach in Turkey.