A trade union representing police officers in Germany voiced shock on Monday after thousands of anti-Islam football hooligans had fought running battles with police in the western city of Cologne the previous day. The self-styled ‘Hooligans Against Salafists’ rally marked the worst rioting yet by a new alliance where Germany‘s far-right groups have recruited violence-prone football fans to their anti-foreigner cause. Police, who detained 17 of the 4,000-strong crowd for acts of violence, had to employ water cannon, baton charges and tear gas on Sunday afternoon to regain control of the crowd, which at one point overturned a police van outside Cologne‘s main railway station. ‘If this grouping consolidates and grows further, then I would say we face a new type of violence,’ warned Arnold Plickert, head of the North Rhine Westphalia state chapter of the GdP police union.