Eagles vs Ajax: violence, verbal abuse and 25 minutes of football...
21 July: This article should have been a match report.
But it's not. Instead, we're going to tell you
how badly things went wrong this afternoon in downtown
Deventer and on the stands of the Adelaarshorst
('Eagles' Nest'), where hooligans battled behind one of the
goals and Eagles supporters continuously hurled abuse at the
Amsterdam visitors. The players felt so unsafe that they
did not want to carry on. Referee Dick Jol took the only
decision he could take: he discontinued the match after 34
minutes.
In case you're interested in some 'football details': Ajax
were 0-1 up at that point, on a goal by Klaas-Jan
Huntelaar in the 25th minute. Edgar Davids has just been
stretchered off with what later turned out to be a
broken shinbone. Ajax's new purchases, Ismael Urzaiz and
Dennis Rommedahl, were not on the pitch (and not on
the bench, either).
Huntelaar scored the only goal in
the abbreviated match. [Photo: Ajax Foto
Side]
It should have been a wonderful afternoon and the first time
for Henk ten Cate to return to the club he played for for many
years. He still 'sponsors' the club, helped saving the club
from bankruptcy and can be regarded as an unofficial 'Eagles
ambassador'. Ten Cate must have looked forward to the friendly
encounter with the red and yellow from Deventer, but alas: some
of the supporters didn't think it was a friendly.
It started to go wrong early in the afternoon, as fights
broke out in downtown Deventer. According to police reports
some 200 Ajax and 100 Eagles hooligans were involved. A
worrying omen for the match itself, because there was no fan
segregation at the Eagles' Nest: all sections of the ground
were 'mixed'.
The atmosphere at the ground (sold out with 6,400
spectators) was grim from the very start and it wasn't long
before fights broke out behind one of the goals. The stream of
(sometimes anti-Semitic) abuse from the home fans never seemed
to stop and the players started to fear that aggressive fans
would invade the pitch, which could easily have happened at a
ground without fencing. Meanwhile, the battle in
downtown Deventer went on. It appeared that most of the
involved hooligans had no match tickets. The ongoing
trouble in the town centre made it impossible for the
police to deploy more people at the stadium:
their troops were badly needed in the centre...
Only minutes after Huntelaar's goal, referee Dick Jol
decided to interrupt the match for what initially seemed to be
a brief 'cooling down period'. But the players felt so
threatened (and were so sick of the constant stream of verbal
abuse) that they did not feel like returning to the pitch. The
referee understood their point and called the game off. Well
over 6,000 'good' people, and a handful of 'bad' ones, could go
home. Go Ahead Eagles' Open Day, which was supposed to start
immediately after the friendly, was also cancelled. A sad, sad
day for both clubs.
A deeply disappointed Henk ten Cate said: "Perhaps it's a
good thing that the players draw the line for a change. I mean:
how on earth can you play football in these
circumstances?"
Police join club officials for
the post-match press conference. [Photo: Ajax Foto
Side]
The friendly (?) at Go Ahead Eagles marked the end of Ajax's
training camp in De Lutte. It was a great week, most of the
time: the team worked hard in training, played increasingly
well in their friendlies, two new players were added to
the group and Wesley Sneijder announced that he will stay.
But it all ended in tears, especially when the doctors had to
conclude that Edgar Davids had
broken his shinbone and will be out for at least three
months.
Ajax had to be escorted out of Deventer by the police and
drove back to Amsterdam, disappointed and angry.
Should we end this article with the match statistics...? We
might as well, just for the record... (MP)
GOAL
- 25' 0-1 Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
Referee: Jol
Cards: none
Attendance: 6,400
Miscellaneous: Game discontinued and called
off due to fan violence after 34 minutes.
Ajax line-up: Stekelenburg; Colin, Stam,
Heitinga, Vermaelen; Gabri, Sneijder, Emanuelson; Kennedy,
Huntelaar, Davids.
Go Ahead Eagles line-up: Moeliker;
Göbel, Maruanaya, Parnela, Vosselman;
Oosthout, Van Dijk, Schotman; Smeekes,
Ars, Ahahaoui.
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