Marcel Brands, general manager of PSV, has rejected the banner campaign by fans of his club. But he also thinks that there is a double standard, because earlier this season, according to him, supporters of Ajax had also misbehaved. Brands said this on Sunday morning in the ESPN program Good Morning Eredivisie.
A group of PSV supporters hung a banner at the house of the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, on Saturday morning. With this they expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that later this Sunday no public is allowed to be present at the top league match between Ajax and PSV.
Halsema decided in August to ban PSV fans from this game in the Johan Cruijff Arena, because they had made anti-Semitic noises at the end of July. This happened when the two teams met in the same stadium for the Johan Cruijff Scale (3-5).
Son of Halsema
The activist PSV supporters also referred to the fact that Halsema’s son had been arrested three years ago for possession of weapons. In the end, he was not prosecuted for this.
Brands “don’t approve” of what happened Saturday morning. “Everyone can disagree with something, but I don’t think you should disturb people in the private situation. I also believe that you should definitely not involve the children of those people.”
‘Don’t double standards’
However, Brands also commented on the reason for the action of a small part of the Eindhoven supporters. “I don’t want to justify it, but if you make such a decision to exclude fans, you should not use double standards. I answered that to the mayor and also let the KNVB know,” said the PSV director in Good Morning Eredivisie.
“In that competition for the Johan Cruijff Scale, two sides were sung and that also annoys us. Then we think: just stand behind your team and leave the opponent alone. But this happened again by both supporter groups. Then we receive a report from the KNVB in which it is all shown per minute and then PSV will receive this penalty plus a fine of 20,000 euros. And the other side is zero. That is difficult to explain to our supporters,” Brands sighs.
Eindhoven mayor Jeroen Dijsselbloem already condemned the banner campaign by the PSV fans on Saturday.
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