More than 220 uniformed law enforcement officers have been deployed to the Alejandro Morera Soto Stadium in the city of Alajuela for tonight’s match between local club Liga Deportiva Alajuelense (LDA) and visitor Club Sport Herediano (CSH). This will be the first of two final matches to crown the Summer Tournament Champion of the First Division, Costa Rica’s highest professional football league.

According to an official press release published by Fuerza Publica, the national police force of Costa Rica, the presence of officers at the stadium will be very visible and strong. There is a strong focus on preventing acts of hooliganism, which have been kept mostly under control in the last few months after a spike in activity from 2010 to 2013.

Most of the officers will be patrolling on foot while others will ride motorcycles. A small contingent will patrol on horseback while others will be stationed along with patrol cars in strategic sectors of downtown Alajuela. An undisclosed number of undercover agents in plainclothes will be on the lookout for known troublemakers. Riot control officers from the tactical Police Intervention Unit will be on standby.

As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, football hooliganism is an area of concern for law enforcement in our country:

Hooliganism is at its most dangerous when it reaches subcultural status. Irvine Welsh’s first novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares, spun a tale of a “fitba casual,” a hooligan who finds affinity in the organized violence related to football matches in Scotland. Some of the details of the hooligan lifestyle in that novel are being discovered in police investigations in Costa Rica: Disenfranchised young men, the use of advanced text messaging through mobile apps, concealed weapons, using matches and violence to coordinate other crimes, complex transportation schemes to travel to away games, drug use, etc.

This match promises to be very exciting as LDA is hoping to reenter a period of football dominance in Costa Rica. CSH tends to attract expat fans ever since David Patey, an expat from the United States, acquired a controlling interest in the club and improved the outlook of CSH in the First Division.