Most fans were still waiting outside when the order came.
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The Dutch team returned to its hotel immediately and were escorted by the police to the airport, from where it flew back to the Netherlands around midnight on Tuesday.
A bomb threat which forced Germany’s friendly against the Netherlands to be cancelled on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) will have an impact on security at Bundesliga grounds, says German FA president Reinhard Rauball. The attackers planned to smuggle the explosives into the stadium in an ambulance, Bild cited the document as saying.
Though a German government minister said at an evening press conference that there was no confirmation explosives were found at or near the stadium.
Both the Netherlands and German team were on their way to the stadium by bus when the match was cancelled. Matthias Hangst / Getty Images Maassen defended the choice to call off the game, which German leader Angela Merkel had been resulting from attend.
Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, told reporters in Berlin that it was “unusual that such a person was faithfully registered in Greece, Serbia and Croatia, even though we’re usually pressing for registration to take place and lament that it isn’t always done properly”.
Eintracht Frankfurt chairman Heribert Bruchhagen said his club would talk to security agencies but that the goal was “to play Saturday, although we can not say the match would take place no matter what”.
Terrorist attacks across six locations in Paris killed 129 people, with three suicide bombers detonating explosive belts in the vicinity of the Stade de France, killing a further victim, during Germany’s 2-0 defeat.
Fans, who had started filling the HDI Arena for the game, were asked to leave in orderly fashion when the game was cancelled. “It was supposed to have been a gesture by the national team”, said De Maziere.
Hanover city police chief Volker Kluwe said there had been “serious plans to cause an explosion” in the 49,000-capacity stadium, and that authorities had acted on “a concrete threat scenario”. Police became more forceful with members of the media who attempted to stay beside the stadium.
There had also been a bomb threat about an hour earlier outside the stadium.
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Earlier, security forces had closed a section of Hannover’s main train station after a suspicious object was discovered; they also evacuated the city’s TUI Arena, although a scheduled concert by the German band Söhne Mannheims was later allowed to proceed.
