Croatian police detain 12 Torcida fans after a mock Ajax coffin and Hitler chants marred Split's big European night

Police in Split arrested 12 Hajduk Split supporters on Friday, a day after thousands of fans turned the build up to the club's Conference League game against Ajax into an antisemitic rally. Before kickoff on Thursday night, a huge crowd from the Torcida supporters group marched to the stadium behind a car carrying a fake coffin with Ajax's name on it. The Amsterdam club has long been linked with the city's Jewish community, and the marchers shouted insults at Jewish people and sang in praise of Hitler. Officers say the 12 men face charges of inciting violence and hatred, and more arrests could follow. It got worse once the game started. Fans fought with police and threw flares and other objects onto the field, forcing a stoppage of about 12 minutes. Hajduk went on to win 2 to 1 in the club's first major European match in 16 years, but almost nobody in Croatia is talking about the score. President Zoran Milanovic and the government both called for punishment, with Milanovic saying there must be no room for glorifying Nazism in the country. The Croatian Football Association said the scenes went against everything sport stands for, and Israel's embassy in Zagreb said it was deeply shocked. Milorad Pupovac, who leads Croatia's ethnic Serb community, said he had seen this coming for a long time. Hajduk apologized, saying the behavior came from only part of its fan base and that the club is ready to accept the consequences. That could mean disciplinary action from UEFA over the stoppage. Critics have long accused Croatian authorities of looking the other way as nostalgia grows for the country's wartime Nazi puppet state, a charge the government denies. Tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and antifascist Croats died in that regime's camps.