page_title: Paris Saint-Germain F.C. supporters
section_title: Tigris Mystic banner
hierarchical_section_title: Paris Saint-Germain F.C. supporters / History / Boulogne-Auteuil war / Tigris Mystic banner
context_page_description: Paris Saint-Germain Football Club is the most popular football club in France and one of the most widely supported teams in the world. Famous PSG fans include former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and retired NBA player Tony Parker.
  Lacking a big passionate fanbase, the club began offering cheaper season tickets to young supporters in 1976. These fans were placed in the Kop K, located in the K section of the Paris stand at Parc des Princes. Following an increase in ticket prices, Kop K supporters moved to the Boulogne stand in 1978, and the Kop of Boulogne was born. There, the club's first Italian-style ultra group, Boulogne Boys, was founded in 1985. Other KoB groups, however, took British hooligans as dubious role models and violence rapidly escalated. PSG supporters' groups have been linked to football hooliganism ever since.
  PSG owners Canal+ responded in 1991 by encouraging and financing non-violent fans of the KoB stand to take place in the Auteuil stand at the other end of Parc des Princes. The Virage Auteuil was born, alongside Supras Auteuil, its most notorious ultras. At first the measure worked but, slowly, a violent rivalry arose between the two stands.
context_section_description: It all changed in May 2003, when Tigris Mystic celebrated their 10th anniversary with a banner that read "The Future Belongs to Us." Subtly aimed at Boulogne, this message was a war declaration for KoB hooligans: Auteuil was the future, while Boulogne was the past. The power struggle that opposed PSG's first historical supporters of Boulogne against the newer ultras of Auteuil was just a cover for the real problem: the racial tension which had existed between the stands for many years.
  Suddenly, the clashes outside Parc des Princes were largely between hooligans of the same team, unlike anywhere else in Europe. One side of the ring featured Boulogne hooligan firms Casual Firm, Commando Loubard and Milice Paris whose members were far-right, white supremacists looking to "rid the suburbs of blacks and Arabs." The other side featured Auteuil multiethnic group Tigris Mystic, whose initially peaceful anti-racist and left-wing ultras then chose to fight back. Tigris Mystic had also began clashing with hooligans from other teams at the start of the 2000s.
  The first skirmishes between Auteuil and Boulogne took place right after the banner, but were cut short by a short-lived truce to fight against the new security policy of the club in 2004. Jean-Pierre Larrue, PSG's head of security, was determined to clear Parc des Princes of hooligans and racists. His idea was to dissolve all the Auteuil and Boulogne groups and recreate two, one unique for each stand, with responsible persons to lead them. But fans menaced mayhem and even sent death threats to PSG president Francis Graille. He eventually lost the backing of his bosses, who pulled the plug on the security plan and fired Larrue.
  The conflict resumed immediately afterwards and incidents occurred wherever PSG played during the 2005–06 season. In October 2005, Casual Firm hooligans thrashed the headquarters of Tigris Mystic, to which the latter responded by attacking a group of Boulogne hooligans in February 2006. Racism in the Kop of Boulogne had become intolerable that campaign and other Virage Auteuil ultras began to denounce it, vocally following Tigris Mystic when they sang "La Marseillaise" while brandishing their French identity card. In spite of this, the stand didn't support the violent actions of Tigris members, which by then had brought them into conflict not only with KoB hooligans but also with big ultra group Boulogne Boys, and even with Auteuil group Karsud, who had close ties with their far-right peers in Boulogne. Since the club directors were scarcely supportive as well, Tigris Mystic decided to self-dissolve in July 2006 after several months of violent incidents. Later, in 2008, several ex-Tigris created a new group, "Auteuil Rouge", who became in 2009 "Grinta".
caption: Lutèce (left), Tigris (bottom) and Supras (right) in 2004.
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