I’ll come out here: I love football. I’m not an expert, not a hardcore fan. But I like little better than to let myself be carried away in the evening by the clear fairy tales on the field after a long day of writing and thinking about complicated matters. It is easier to switch on and off than Netflix, and if necessary you can also do the VAT return while watching with the laptop on your lap.
The VAT return that I completed last week during the cup final between Ajax and PSV went very quickly. Little attention was needed: the game was brought to a halt by riots, quarrels and outbursts of anger from agitated players. It was reminiscent of American sports, which also come to a standstill every minute. The sporting function of this kind of aggressiveness is completely unclear to me.
Now I really know that violence has entertainment value. When I first saw an ice hockey game I was once amazed at the big brawl that broke out. It turned out to be a standard part of a competition. They say: I went to watch a fight and then suddenly an ice hockey game broke out. The public expects a fighting attitude from ice hockey players, it’s pretty much in your job description.
I don’t know if football is supposed to be a kind of ice hockey. The entertainment value of the quarrels is not very high so far. On the field we see males who cannot control themselves, their emotions and their behavior. And that behavioral problem is not limited to the players. In football you see it in the boardrooms and with the coaches, with the youngest hooligans and at the chat tables where the games are discussed.
Starting with the systematic misconduct in the stands. A few ruin it for the rest, so some condone it. It’s amazing that the individual can throw his lighter from the only side in the stadium that doesn’t have a net. Again and again, supporters with fireworks and a stadium ban in their pocket turn out to be able to spoil the game from the stands.
The same Davy Klaassen who fell victim to the lighter at Feyenoord-Ajax at the beginning of April went to work last Sunday to play the cup final. And stood there, like every week, babbling, pushing and pulling at a competitor. Not for a serious football crime. Just a squabble, a tackle or something. No one in football will give him a red card and send him on an anger management course. No, he gets paid sixty thousand euros for it. Weekly.
The fact that Klaassen plays at Ajax at all is thanks to such another football icon of good behavior, the departed technical director Marc Overmars. For a year Ajax and Overmars trained the disciplinary case of serious transgressive behavior towards female employees and former players of Ajax. The transfer to Royal Antwerp FC went relatively smoothly. There, the Belgian football club has a chance to become champion, thanks to the astonishingly brilliant insights of Overmars, of course. I hardly dare to ask, but how are the women who work at Antwerp doing? Is Overmars a technical director who, as a woman, can always call or text you if something is going on?
Fortunately, the sports commentators do not leave themselves unaffected. They complain bitterly, and not only about the bad football, but also about the lack of self-control of the footballers. Regular NOS analyst and former player Rafael van der Vaart mentioned Klaassen’s behavior after the cup final idiot.
That could have been a very credible stern comment, were it not for the fact that it comes from the studio of a program where the editor-in-chief resigned a few weeks earlier because it never did anything about the deeply rooted sexism and intimidation in the editorial office. Can you still credibly criticize the other person’s lack of self-control from such a program?
I look up from my bookkeeping and see something remarkable. That big fight between about twenty men has actually escalated into a real football match. Idea for the KNVB: maybe they can embrace the ice hockey model and accept that credible enforcement is no longer possible against violence in Dutch football. The players just need to learn how to fight properly.
Rosanne Hertzberger is a microbiologist.
A version of this article also appeared in the May 6, 2023 issue of the newspaper.