The Football and Safety audit team has come up with a damning conclusion after investigating the Feyenoord – Ajax match on April 5, 2023, the NOS. According to the audit team, it is a miracle that no injuries occurred in the stands of De Kuip.
The match on April 5 was the semi-final of the TOTO KNVB Cup. Ajax was too strong for the Rotterdam team in this match with 1-2. Davy Klaassen scored the winning goal. After an altercation between Dusan Tadic and Orkun Kökçü, Klaassen had a lighter thrown in the head from the audience, after which he had to leave the field moments later.
However, the investigation mainly focused on the unsafe situation in the stands. The audit team concluded that the combination of smuggled torches, fireworks, overcrowded compartments and enormous banners caused major fire safety risks.
A reconstruction shows that just before the match, guards decided to stop frisking because impatient fans were putting pressure on them. This allows many people to enter the stadium uncontrollably. At another location, the police intercepted a bag containing no fewer than fourteen pieces of fireworks.
Before the match starts, a huge banner is displayed on the crowded Gerard Meijer Stand. Several torches are lit under the banner. Extremely dangerous, according to the researchers.
“The chance that the flag could have caught fire due to torches or shot projectiles and that in the fire and smoke people would have panicked, people would have suffered burns and that people would be oppressed is too great not to do anything about it and therefore, action must be taken against it,” is the opinion of the audit team and is recorded by the NOS.
Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, is shocked by the research results and blames Feyenoord for the overcrowded compartments. “It means that part of the stadium is too busy and that Feyenoord is selling tickets more than people are allowed to be there,” he said in a response to the state broadcaster.
The research also points to the Heysel disaster in 1985 and the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. “No situation is the same, but when panic breaks out, there is no guarantee that people will make it to the emergency exit in one piece, even if they are open, because the crowds will move and there is a good chance that people will fall over, get trampled, or, for example, become victims of the fire that is happening at that moment.”