Players attacked and even injured, illegal fireworks that cause thick clouds of smoke, matches that are abandoned, flares on the field: 2022/2023 will go down in the books as the season in which football violence flared up in all its intensity. The low point for now is the head injury suffered by Ajax player Davy Klaassen on Wednesday evening in the cup match against Feyenoord, after he was hit by an object from the stands. How do we stop the hooligan terror?
Not for the time being, says professor of clinical psychology Jan Derksen, who has studied the behavior of – as they used to be called – football hooligans. “This will probably go on for years,” he says gloomily. “We live in a culture of anger. People nowadays find it increasingly difficult to express their frustration. Dealing less well with adversity. In addition, football is a competitive sport, in which kicking takes place, in which aggression is necessary to play well. That, of course, spills over to the public.”
Like at the moment in the Classic when the two captains of Feyenoord and Ajax, Orkun Kökçü and Dusan Tadic, were raised with their heads against each other during a disturbance. “But without that aggression you don’t have a game, so you can’t ban that. That goes against the nature of the sport.”
‘Imitate’
The sociologist Ramon Spaaij, who has done a lot of research into hooligans, also fears that a solution is far away. “The negative spiral is difficult to turn around,” he says, looking at the growing aggression in and around the national football temples. “Once incidents occur in certain places, it becomes more likely that they will happen more often. Others start imitating it, and such behavior normalizes.”
That can be seen this season. It’s not just the clubs that have traditionally been more at risk, either, where things are getting out of hand. Fans of Heerenveen were long known as the best in the Netherlands, but the league match at AZ was temporarily halted after ten minutes a few days ago, after torches were thrown onto the field from the Frisian public. Things have also gotten out of hand in Groningen recently; defender Jetro Willems even received a blow from his ‘own’ supporter when he wanted to calm down the spectators. Willems filed a report with the police.
A hooligan was arrested at PSV after he attacked keeper Marko Dmitrovic in the Europa League match of the Eindhoven club with Sevilla. Despite a stadium ban, the man managed to enter the Philips stadium. On Wednesday evening in Rotterdam things went wrong within half a minute. The semi-final of the KNVB cup tournament had to be stopped after thick plumes of smoke caused by fireworks made it impossible to continue playing.
‘Testosterone’
For example, there are still many clubs in the Eredivisie and in the Kitchen Champion Division that are struggling with hooliganism. Derksen throws a ball: let supporters meet at a place to fight each other, in a way that society is not saddled with high costs. “Young men are full of testosterone and fighting spirit, that is biologically determined, and that has to get out. Groups often already make arrangements to meet. If the government makes it clear that there is only one place where fighting is allowed, that could be a solution for many.”
Major and complex social problems also contribute to the barbaric behavior of some, the professor emphasises. “We have the climate discussion in the Netherlands, there is now a war going on in Europe. And we have had to deal with the corona pandemic. Some find it difficult to deal with.”
Spaaij also thinks that, especially, the lockdown has something to do with that. “It seems that after returning to the stadiums, some have to get used to all the emotions that are evoked during the match, so they react very strongly to it. In any case, it does not seem wise to me to take generic measures, such as banning all fans. That only breeds more dissatisfaction.”
‘Fake security’
Derksen also thinks that empty stadiums are not the solution. “That is the death knell for football. Moreover, those people will gather outside the stadium.” He’s gloomy about that. “You can set a duty to report, install cameras, but it is all a false sense of security. People who do something impulsively don’t think about it.”
So what is Columbus’s egg? Again away supporters who misbehave during the next game outside the door, was the urgent appeal that the Amsterdam police chief Frank Paauw, portfolio holder for football violence and hooligans within the National Police, recently made. This season, some clubs decided to exclude away supporters in advance, such as Cambuur Leeuwarden. But at the Classic in De Kuip it was a supporter in his own stadium who threw an object.
Derksen thinks that only a radically different view of the matter can change something. “It is always the same people who discuss this topic. If you put sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists together, supplemented with artists, an unexpected, creative approach may emerge. Something no one has ever thought of before. Stadiums could be set up differently, as a club you can also opt for music that is not exciting. I know it doesn’t suit the conservative football world, but so far there has been a lot of talk, without it leading to a solution.”