Or they could just have directed people to a soccer field outside the village (since most people have probably arrived via public transit) and put on a stage with some music.
Even if some rioting would've started, there would be no houses or shops to demolish, and it would be far easier to isolate the rioting core group from other people.
The mayor refuted such plans with claims that that made the authorities responsible on the occasion something happened. As if that is worse than the current outcome.
I don't think this idea is really feasible. There wasn't time to prepare an event of such scale adequately (especially its security), and the argument about responsibility is true I think (not that the current outcome is much better). Also I tend to believe the claim that there were hooligans among them who only came to wreak havoc.
In hindsight they should've blocked all access ways to the village (train and roads). I say in hindsight because people simply didn't expect this to go so wrong.
The lesson to me is that mobs are a scary thing. They can turn angry very suddenly as people start to copy the behavior of the first person to throw a stone.
3 days before the event it was mentioned in the media, enough time to put at least something there.
I heard a rumor that they changed some street signs to confuse the people, now that is wasting time.
They knew a lot of people were going to really show up, but they took it lightly.
Non the less the people destroying stuff are way out of line, all the errors of the authorities don't justify that.
I really don't think 3 days is enough time to organize a large scale event like that--more people signed up than the population of the village. I agree that it wasn't handled correctly, but it's easy to criticize in hindsight. This is a new phenomenon and there was not much experience with things like this.
It seems that the authorities where too ambivalent. On the one hand they said please don't come there's no party, on the other hand they prepared a football field for people to go to (without music though). They should've stuck with the former and enforced it by not letting the trains stop in the village and putting up road blocks.
they could just have directed people to a soccer field outside the village
One disadvantage to that is that the pitch could be ruined then. Thousands (or hundreds) of people on a grass field and it'll be mud city. What happens afterwards when that pitch is supposed to be used? Who pays (potentially) for reseeding it?
Even if some rioting would've started, there would be no houses or shops to demolish, and it would be far easier to isolate the rioting core group from other people.
The mayor refuted such plans with claims that that made the authorities responsible on the occasion something happened. As if that is worse than the current outcome.