When FC Emmen takes on FC Groningen in De Oude Meerdijk on Sunday, the support for the visitors as far as the Emmen are concerned will only come from the profession with FC Groningen supporters. Because many more FC Groningen supporters want to attend the match than the 375 places in the away section, there was a risk that fans from Groningen would set their sights on tickets in the free sale for the home sections. But FC Emmen has put a stop to that.
That has everything to do with the match earlier this month between FC Emmen and sc Heerenveen. Then Frisian supporters managed to get tickets for the home sections, which led to a confrontation after the game between some of the supporters of both clubs, in the parking lot behind the stadium. FC Emmen wants to prevent similar situations on Sunday and therefore kept a close eye on free ticket sales.
In practice, this meant that FC Emmen only wanted to sell the free tickets to supporters who had often visited a duel between the Emmen team and who had become a member of FC Emmen before October. Because the club had suddenly received a lot of new registrations in the run-up to Sunday. In addition, the supporters section adjacent to the away section was excluded from the free sale tickets, so that only fans of Emmen will be there on Sunday. The exact opposite happened against sc Heerenveen.
“It was simply necessary”, is the short reaction of André van der Aa, FC Emmen’s supporters coordinator. It doesn’t matter what he thinks about it personally. “Because we all made this decision together,” he says. So bad for well-meaning fans of FC Groningen, a few dozen of whom already had bad luck. Due to a mistake at FC Groningen, there were 52 tickets too many for the guest section; those supporters have now been told that they cannot travel to Emmen on Sunday.
Incidentally, FC Groningen supporters will not only be banned from the home areas of De Oude Meerdijk on Sunday. FC Groningen fans are also not welcome in the station area and the center of Emmen. “But that is not only for the match against FC Groningen. This is a standard agreement around FC Emmen’s home games that is made between the municipality, FC Emmen and the police,” said a spokesman for the municipality of Emmen.