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• Fans to get chance to try new-style seating used in Germany • ‘We are not talking about bringing back old-style terraces’ The Football Supporters’ Federation plans to tour the country with an example of the “rail seating” widely used in German grounds in a bid to gain support for its campaign to reintroduce standing at top-level English matches. The Guardian revealed that the sports minister, Hugh Robertson , has agreed to consider reintroducing standing areas , which have been banned in the top two divisions since 1994, if the football authorities and police form a consensus in support. The FSF is determined to demonstrate the difference between modern standing accommodation and the old-style English football terraces in grounds at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. John Darch, an FSF member, is working with the UK manufacturer Ferco Seating Systems, a partner to Germany company Eheim-Möbel, which has built rail seating in Hoffenheim’s new stadium and the refurbished Stuttgart stadium. “We have to help people understand we are not talking about bringing back old-style terraces,” Darch said. “I will be inviting supporters at all clubs around the country to contact me asking me to visit with the mock-up. Then fans themselves, the chairmen and chief executives of clubs, safety officers and politicians can see we are talking about modern supporter accommodation, which fans and clubs enjoy, and which is passed as safe by the Bundesliga.” Most clubs in the Bundesliga, which has the highest crowds and is the world’s most profitable league, incorporate standing areas, including at newly-built or refurbished grounds. The German Football Federation decided in 1993 against introducing all-seat stadiums, as has been required here by law since the 1990 Taylor report following Hillsborough. The federation explained its reasoning by saying it is a “social function” of football to keep ticket prices affordable, thereby not excluding the “socially disadvantaged” from attending matches. Prices in Germany for standing areas, at around €12-14 (£10.50-£12.20), are around a quarter of standard prices for seats at top Premier League clubs. The German stadiums’ standing areas, some of them very large, some smaller, are made up of rail seating, called “vario” seats in Germany. Rails are spaced closely together, allowing just one or two rows of supporters in between. The Bundesliga and safety authorities which approve standing areas take the view that the closeness of the barriers makes a crush almost impossible. Fans’ tickets allocate a row and position, which the FSF argues should meet one of the police’s main concerns, that in standing areas, it is more difficult to identify people causing trouble. The rails have flip-up seats which are locked upright for Bundesliga matches at which fans stand, then brought down for Champions League matches at which fans sit. Uefa and Fifa both require stadiums used for their competitions to be all-seater, so the rail seating enables Bundesliga grounds to meet that requirement. Ferco Seating Systems’ managing director, Michael Burnett, said his company built and supplied the 60,000 seats for Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, and is making the seats for the London 2012 Olympics aquatic centre. “We would not be proposing the introduction of the vario seat for standing areas if we did not believe it is very safe indeed,” he said. “Germany has very stringent safety legislation and specifications, and the vario seat fulfils all of those. I would go further, and say it would be much safer here to have this accommodation designed specifically for modern safe standing, than to have supporters standing, as they currently do, in seated areas, where there is only a low seat in front of them to break a fall.” Research recently carried out for the Premier League by consultants Crowd Dynamics found that persistent standing in seating areas, which is becoming more common at top clubs, presents a significant safety risk. According to the Football Licensing Authority, fans standing up in seated areas could result in “progressive crowd collapse” – a crush. However, repeated efforts by clubs to ask fans to keep to their seats are failing, and fans are continuing to stand. Andy Holt, a spokesman on football policing for the Association of Chief Police Officers, acknowledged to the Guardian that standing areas can be safe. He said the police reluctance to see standing areas return to the top two divisions is more a question of crowd control, and policing disorder, than safety in terms of Hillsborough-style crushes. Holt said, however, that it would be “rewarding football supporters for breaking the rules” if safe standing areas were to be reintroduced at English grounds in response to fans standing now in seated areas. Bundesliga European football David Conn guardian.co.uk