Dealing with football fans is for city councils and the police balance on a tightrope. Do you intervene when supporters gather around a football stadium and do not obey the corona rules or do you just let them because intervention is likely to get things out of hand? Security expert Frank Wijnveld responds to the riots at the NAC stadium in Breda on Sunday evening and how the police dealt with it.
In the lost play-off match of NAC against NEC, things went completely wrong around the stadium on Sunday. A group of ‘supporters’ standing outside the stadium tried to enter the stadium after the final whistle. It led to a tough confrontation with the police. Police officers were bombarded with fireworks and pelted with fences.
Those supporters had already stood around the stadium with hundreds of people all afternoon. They did not have a ticket and were not allowed to attend the game. So they really had no business at the stadium, but they were there. Many so-called supporters walked around with bags full of fireworks. The group did not care about the corona measures. They were too close together and were not wearing face masks. Yet the police did not intervene.
“This is almost impossible to explain for a director,” says Frank Wijnveld. He worked for the police for years and was also active at PSV. He knows the dilemmas that governments face. “It is of course a strange image that there is no intervention here, but in a full park, for example.”
“The police could have intervened earlier in Breda too, but then there was a good chance that this would have been the start of a whole day of riots. And if you want to tackle the biggest turn-ons from that crowd, you also run the risk of innocent people being beaten. Then you also have the puppets dancing in public opinion. ”
Police chief Frederiek Schouwenaar confirms that in the ‘triangle’ (police, mayor and judiciary) it has been decided not to intervene if a group of supporters comes together. “I understand that this leads to questions, but we have weighed the safety interests against the health risk.” And so public order outweighed the corona rules. By bringing supporters together in one place, the police have the group in view and they do not spread uncontrollably throughout the city.
The police therefore often gamble on being able to maintain order and prevent worse by not intervening. Only afterwards you will know whether you have done it correctly. “Of course those hooligans know that too. And they make good use of it. ”
And so you see that authorities let things like this run their course for a while. We saw it at the champion parties of Ajax in Amsterdam and Cambuur in Leeuwarden. But also around the play-off match of NAC in Breda. Only when the supporters started to misbehave did the police intervene. According to mayor Depla van Breda you cannot call the group supporters. He calls them sneaky guys who abuse football to kick shit.
Wijnveld thinks that this explosiveness also has something to do with the corona crisis. Many young people feel trapped and are looking for ways to break out. You saw that with the curfews in Eindhoven and Den Bosch, but now also at NAC. And those same young people who are outside the stadium in Breda also go to illegal parties in the woods. “We live in a strange time. It is to be hoped that the pressure will go off a bit when more people are vaccinated and we get back to normal life. ”
.
