Violence among football fans continues to escalate

On Sunday evening, March 5, just before half past seven, three men mounted a television screen on the back of a car in a deserted parking lot in Leeuwarden. A little later, a coach from Deventer with dozens of young men in it turns onto the site. They belong to the ‘hard core’ of Go Ahead Eagles and wear black jackets and caps. When they see the handful of journalists gathered when they get out, some of them put on their hoods. “Fuck off with those cameras,” they shout. Fireworks are thrown and some journalists are intimidated.

The light poles of the Cambuur Stadium can be seen in the distance. Go Ahead Eagles will play there that evening against SC Cambuur. Normally the Go Ahead fans would have been in the stadium, but now they are confined to the television screen in the parking lot. This is due to a decision that the mayor of Leeuwarden, Sybrand Buma, took at the end of February. After violence surrounding the match between SC Cambuur and SC Heerenveen, in which dozens of people were injured and the police were attacked, Buma decided, on the advice of the police, to no longer allow supporters of visiting clubs into the Cambuur Stadium during the current season.

A week later, Buma explains at the city hall in Leeuwarden that he made the decision after several home games of Cambuur, during which rioters often targeted departing away fans and police. The authorities tried to ensure safety in and around the stadium with various measures. Away fans were only welcome for certain matches on an organized bus trip (the so-called ‘bus combination’), more police were deployed and access roads to the stadium were closed. It all turned out to be insufficient. “It escalated so much during the match against Heerenveen that it could not have been made safe even with 150 police officers,” says Buma.

Almost all parties involved are angry about the decision. In addition to Go Ahead Eagles supporters, Cambuur, the KNVB football association and supporters of other clubs also reacted angrily to the decision. “A top-down decision has been made that mainly punishes people who really can’t do anything about it,” said a statement on Cambuur’s website. Cambuur believes that initiatives that have focused on ‘normalization’ in recent years are “being destroyed in one fell swoop.” For some time now, away fans at the Cambuur Stadium have been welcomed with snacks, drinks and music specially selected for the visiting club.

Law is strict, on paper

Violence flared at the end of the pandemic, when supporters were allowed back into the stadium. In the 2021-2022 season, an investigation into disturbances in the stadium was initiated 179 times by the independent prosecutor of the KNVB football association, who observed more ‘disorders’ and also took stricter action. That was almost three times as much as in previous seasons (not including corona years). Almost twice as many stadium bans (1,250) have also been issued as usual in the past ten years.

Since the pandemic, directors and experienced supporters of clubs have seen an increase in younger fans, who often do not comply with applicable standards and do not take much advice from the older guard. The hierarchy in supporter circles has been shaken up and social control has weakened, it sounds.

This season it has happened almost every week: a PSV supporter who runs onto the field and punches the Sevilla goalkeeper in the face, supporters of FC Den Bosch who abuse the club’s stewards and security guards, fans of FC Volendam and FC Emmen who seek each other out to fight in the fishing village. It is just a small selection of the events of the past few months.

Why are authorities unable to get the problems under control? According to Jan Brouwer, professor of general law at the University of Groningen, it is in any case not due to the legislation. “We have the strictest legislation in the world,” he says. Only: in practice it does not work well, according to an analysis of the so-called ‘football law’ by research agency Pro Facto. This law regulates, among other things, area and group bans and a reporting obligation in the event of stadium bans. But the analysis shows that these measures are often “unknown” to the responsible authorities, or that they have “cold feet” to implement them. They fear, among other things, the administrative burden.

If there is a reporting obligation, supporters must report at the club’s playing times. But often supporters only receive a stadium ban, and they can still enter the station with tickets from others. For example, the PSV fan who attacked the Sevilla goalkeeper had a stadium ban. The twenty-year-old man was sentenced by the police judge to three months in prison, suspended and a ban on the area around the PSV stadium.

Football supporters believe that the way they are treated is also a cause of the problems. Matthijs Keuning is a supporter of AZ and chairman of the Supporters Collective Netherlands, an organization in which supporter associations from all clubs are united. According to him, not all rules are carefully followed. “The KNVB already applies quite strict safety requirements, but not all clubs meet them. It is also a problem for the police and municipalities. At some matches there are fewer stewards than there should be. If you have your organization in order, you can prevent many incidents,” says Keuning.

According to Keuning, supporters are increasingly unable to take their own transport to away matches. “The mandatory bus combination, in which away fans are transported to the door of the visiting stadium, is a thorn in the side of supporters. If you are received normally and can walk around the city for a while, you will also behave more normally,” he says.

Figures kept by the Supporters Collective show that away fans have been banned more often since the pandemic. This Sunday is the seventh Eredivisie match for Ajax-Feyenoord where no away crowd is welcome – this has been the case for the ‘Classic’ for fourteen years. At the second professional level, in the Kitchen Champion Division, even more bans are issued. Since the beginning of February, away fans have not been allowed at fifteen matches in that competition.

From door to door

Mayors, police and the Public Prosecution Service prefer to see supporters transported ‘door to door’, because it provides as much control as possible. Banning away fans keeps most problems at bay altogether. Recently, the mayor of Eindhoven, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, decided not to receive supporters at a PSV Cambuur match. Like his colleague Buma, he did so on the advice of the police. The Northern Netherlands police no longer want to assist supporters of FC Groningen and Cambuur after threats and misconduct against them.

The police don’t want any questions NRC answer, but acting police chief of Northern Netherlands Joop de Scheffer wrote in a press release that “as the police we cannot afford to have to be present in such large numbers every time to facilitate a football match.”

Professor Jan Brouwer sees that the threshold for mayors is becoming increasingly lower to keep away fans out. Other mayors are closely monitoring Buma’s decision, he says. “They see it as an opportunity to appeal to the clubs and supporters to say: if you do not organize yourself well and manage to control yourself, this can also happen.” Police chief De Scheffer in the press release: “We no longer facilitate a small group of supporters at the expense of a large group of officers and citizens.”

Buma simply believes it is no longer sustainable to deploy police capacity for a small group of rioters. “We have a very big problem with a number of people who apparently have no brakes whatsoever and use a football match to throw stones at everything that passes by,” he says in his office. He hopes for more social control among football fans. “I know how difficult that is, but the funny thing is: we already accept that this does not exist in football.”

Is it just going in the wrong direction? Not always. NEC from Nijmegen invested in social control and communication with supporters after things got completely out of hand after a match against Vitesse a year and a half ago, with NEC supporters fighting with the police. The municipality of Nijmegen recently announced that five hundred away supporters of the Arnhem club will be welcome in the Goffert Stadium for the Gelderland derby between NEC and Vitesse next month. After the riots in 2021, two mutual matches were played in Arnhem without an away crowd. Once a ban applied and the second time the NEC supporters boycotted the match, because only a limited number of supporters were welcome.

“We have very frequent consultations with supporters at all levels of our club,” says general manager Wilco van Schaik. “This communication has created an enormous amount of trust between supporters, the municipality, the police, the Public Prosecution Service and the club.”

In consultation, a parade through the city and (regulated) fireworks were organized, and because that went well, mutual trust grew. The municipality and the club set the rules, and the supporters handle them well, according to Van Schaik. “This gives us a chance to experience the derby in a normal way and with a full section.”

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