The match NAC – Willem II in the Kitchen Champion Division was definitively canceled on Friday evening, because supporters threw fireworks and beer on the field. This happened under the guidelines tightened by the KNVB last week. The Brabant derby had started later, because there were plenty of fireworks before kick-off.
After about seventy minutes of play, the game was first temporarily stopped because one piece of fireworks landed on the field. The fireworks could be extinguished quickly, but referee Jeroen Manschot decided to follow the stricter guidelines of the KNVB and temporarily send all players to the changing rooms.
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When Willem II scored after the resumption, beer was thrown from the same section at the provocatively celebrating players from Tilburg, according to NAC fans, and Manschot decided to stop the match definitively.
‘Right decision’
“It is always a matter of waiting to see whether a referee acts according to the rules or thinks: I overlook it,” Willem II trainer Reinier Robbemond said to ESPN after the match was stopped. “He follows the rules. Rightly so. Apparently, as players, you are no longer even allowed to celebrate a goal, then you get this right away.”
NAC coach Peter Hyballa is disappointed with the part of his own supporters who, according to him, have “absolutely no discipline” and says the fear that the strike of football matches will become more common in the Netherlands.
Feyenoord-Ajax
The KNVB tightened the rules for professional football last week, after Ajax player Davy Klaassen was hit on the head in De Kuip by an object that the Feyenoord crowd threw at him.
From now on, the players will immediately leave the field if something is thrown from the audience and the game will be permanently stopped if it happens again. NAC – Willem II was the first game where that was actually the case.
The KNVB hopes that with the tightened guidelines, potential perpetrators “no longer get it into their heads” to attack players or referees.