Suppose Professor Barabas had existed and he had flashed you back with his time machine. What kind of world would you have ended up in if…
SCount that Professor Barabas had existed and he had flashed you back with his time machine. What kind of world would you have ended up in if you had landed in the late ’80s? Let’s limit ourselves to the football world for a moment. In any case, it is falling into disrepair.
When the Netherlands became vice world champions in 1978, everyone was euphoric, after some skepticism. For the second time, the Netherlands is number two in the world. And this time with a lower quality team! Even without Cruijff we can do it. And maybe second place in ’78 is even better. No, the football was not brilliant, but it was effective. And in the last matches the Dutch swagger returned.
THowever, the second place in 1978 obscures a lot. Things have declined somewhat since the second half of the 1970s. PSV won the UEFA Cup in 1978, but Feyenoord and Ajax were no longer present in international club football after 1974.
The public has been spoiled for years. In the 1970s, unlike today, we still demanded good football. You don’t come for anything else. And if it’s bad, then you stay away. The empty places in the stands are getting bigger year after year.
That is not strange, by the way. Where stadiums are now true theaters of entertainment, this was not the case in the 70s and 80s. Save? You mean survive.
Save? You mean survive.
The wishes of the public are hardly taken into account. The stadiums are still fortresses surrounded by fences. The coffee is lukewarm, the beer too. The sausages are fatty, the balls are chewy.
People stand on the concrete stands. You look around you nervously. Sometimes there are ‘hooligans’ in your stands. Are they, but also you, hunted by the flat cap. With the help of a platoon of horses. Anyone who doesn’t move on gets a slap. Not an atmosphere that brings your wife and children along. Football is simply unsafe in those years. No wonder the stadiums are not being renovated. They are eventually broken down just as quickly.
As a child I read an interview with a real hooligan in Voetbal International. His name is Ivan. Iwan is from the hard core of FC Groningen. Iwan is a punk and a squatter and a hooligan. I don’t remember what he says anymore. I can still see his photo in my mind. An angry cockscomb frowning into the camera, wearing suits, a denim jacket and I think also a few basic buttons on his chest. The most striking thing about the photo is that Iwan has a claw hammer in his left hand. The interview and certainly the photo made a deep impression on me.
Hooligans are new and therefore get airtime. But because the police hardly know what to do with the vandals, they have free rein. Trains are being demolished, sidewalks are being demolishedare dismantled, enemy supporters are injured. Fighting is not only done with fists, but with chains, knives, hammers and axes. Half the Gamma is used to conduct an effective street guerrilla.
My first real football match – apart from a number of friendly games of summer evening football – must have been PSV-Sparta in 1991. Countless times I asked my father if we would go to football. But my father did not dare to do that with children.
- [message]
- A butcher’s knife, daggers, and melee weapons
- Ajax-Feyenoord will be played on October 28, 1978. Ajax has received several threats from Rotterdam. The Amsterdam police are therefore on high alert during the match that will be played on Saturday evening (!).
The loot of that evening: a butcher’s knife, daggers, melee weapons, various dangerous household items and a revolver loaded with 7 live cartridges.
De Telegraaf reports that the police had everything under control, but along the way they saw a looted and destroyed herring cart, broken car mirrors, boys walking over cars and a destroyed tram.
Operating deficits
Many clubs get into trouble because of these spectators running away and sometimes running away. And so from 1977 onwards the government became structurally involved in professional football. It is (almost) unthinkable now, but one football club after another was kept alive with government money in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, clubs only had two sources of income: the receipts, raised by spectators, and a number of sponsors who were willing to put a sign on the side of the road. Business seats? Not yet in the 80s. Ajax is the first club to start it, but the left-wing VI sees nothing but ‘penosis’ in it.
The government does play a double role in the whole. They themselves provide funds to help clubs, but on the other hand they are very patronizing when it comes to matters such as (shirt) sponsorship. Certain clubs are hardly visible in Studio Sport due to too many billboards. MVV has been screwed for years. A summary of MVV in the early 1980s is guaranteed to be 2 minutes. Filmed from the sidelines. The signs are not allowed on screen.
The legislation comes from the Minister of CRM, Til Gardeniers. She is busy making all kinds of laws that combat overly conspicuous sports sponsorship. Not only football players suffer from this. Hilbert van der Duim is also in trouble. If he wears a jacket from Labello again, the skating association will take action. Fine and suspension for Van der Duim. Poor Hilbert, semi-amateur and unemployed schoolteacher, may skate very fast but earn no money. Purely to annoy the skating drivers, Hilbert sometimes rides one lap too few or makes a slide over bird droppings.
In the meantime, shirt sponsorship is allowed in surrounding countries, which ultimately leads to an exodus of talented players. Certainly in Belgium, Dutch professionals earn better wages than in the Netherlands.
And no sponsorship, so no shirt advertising and money from the business community, was the strict demand of politicians at the time. It is almost endearing to read how Jac Hogewoning, a permanent resident of the professional football section board in the 1970s and 1980s, wholeheartedly supports the opposition to shirt sponsorship: ‘Why would a shirt sponsor join Ajax? There are now 10,000 spectators there. Isn’t that attractive for a sponsor?’
It was the prevailing opinion in the 1970s. Advertising was dirty. Contamination of the beautiful club shirt. No director had yet understood anything about television money, or indeed the power of TV. That changes when Eric Vilé reports to the Zeister forest.
Hogewoning was ultimately sidetracked due to the sponsor discussion. Eric Vilé becomes the new chairman of the section board and he likes to have it both ways. “We need both the government and the business community,” section chairman Eric Vilé dared to say in March 1981, when the 40 million from the government had been received.
“It is better for us to combine both now, because in the long run you cannot stop sponsorship. The rapid rise of satellites and commercial television makes it increasingly attractive for businesses to advertise through sports.”
In 1982 the time finally came. Dutch football clubs are allowed to wear a sponsor on their chest. Ajax comes with TDK, Feyenoord with the Gouden Gids and PSV of course with Philips. But mid-range brands are also sought after by the major A-brands. They do not want to miss the boat and that is why Nissan (Utrecht), AGO (later through the merger with Ennia, Aegon, Fc Groningen), Dr Schupp (from Unilever, at PEC Zwolle) and De Efteling (because of long-neck Van Gaal at Sparta) are joining the sponsor adventure.
Quality
So it is not pleasant in the stadium. Vandalism is rampant and you don’t have to come to the stadium for comfort in the 1980s. Many clubs still have too little money. The stars of the 70s are no longer affordable. And so there is nothing left but to invest in one’s own youth.
So in the early 1980s, football had to undergo construction. There is more that is not right and under those circumstances the number two in the world has to compete again for a new final tournament. The 1980 European Championship is at stake.
