Football fans who are watching a game far too close to each other are singing, dancing and shouting. It was entirely predictable that this would go so wrong. That’s what a number of crowd managers spoke to Omroep Brabant. “Football fans cannot be controlled, you know that.”
None of the crowd managers we spoke to want to be called by name. It is a small world and advising municipalities is regularly part of their job responsibilities. They are unanimous in their harsh judgment about the decisions taken in Tilburg in the run-up to and during the meeting of Willem II fans on the square near the Euroscoop.
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“It didn’t look well organized,” says one of them. “Terribly stupid”, another calls it. “Issuing this permit was the dumbest decision in months.”
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The permit issued by the municipality contained quite a few special corona rules:
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But many of those rules in the permit were not met at all, saw one of the crowd managers who went to take a look in Tilburg. “I mainly saw the hard core of Willem II. There was a small gate that was the entrance to the site. But there was no control at all. No health check, no registration, nothing. There were only two men at the gate who said: ‘Use hand gel’, that’s all. ”
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It was foreseeable that this would go so wrong, says one of the crowd managers we spoke to. “This was predictable.” Another agrees. The layout of the site already went wrong. “Both the screen and the dj-booth as the bar stood side by side, at the back of the property. That is why all supporters got together in any case. Because it was arranged that way. ”
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Mayor Weterings places the responsibility for violating the corona rules on the fans. But according to this crowd manager that is not justified. “A permit is issued on the basis of a plan. This plan contained basic design flaws. We acted too quickly in this decision. ”
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