The match between FC Groningen and NEC came to an early end on Saturday after someone from the audience threw a cup of beer at a linesman. Referee Richard Martens then stopped the game, which had only been going on for eighteen minutes. Moments later, the Eredivisie game was definitively stopped. Security guards removed one person from the stands.
Since the cup match between Ajax and Feyenoord, in which Davy Klaassen got an object from the audience on his head, the guidelines of the KNVB have been tightened. If someone from the audience throws an object, a match must be stopped. If that happens again, a game will be stopped. According to the new rules, if a player or referee is hit by an object, they must stop immediately.
It is the second time that a match in Dutch professional football has been suspended since the football association tightened the rules, after NAC Breda – Willem II last week. That match will be played next week without an audience. For FC Groningen it is not the first time this season that the club has been in the news negatively because of its own supporters: in March, defender Jetro Willems was hit by a so-called supporter.
General manager Wouter Gudde says against NOS that he cannot understand that his own supporters are misbehaving again during a football match. “It is inconceivable that an individual, with everything that has happened in recent months here and in football at all, would do this,” he says. “Then I think you’re out of your mind.”
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