Ajax-Feyenoord to be replayed without crowd: federation

The remaining 35 minutes of the ‘Klassieker’ between Ajax and Feyenoord will be played Wednesday behind closed doors, the Dutch football federation said, after the referee abandoned this weekend’s match due to flares fired onto the pitch.

The KNVB association said it had been guided by the principle that in such cases “a match should preferably be decided on the field… the match must then be resumed as soon as possible.”

Dutch giants Ajax were 3-0 down after 55 minutes on Sunday, as their bitter rivals from Rotterdam humiliated them in front of their home fans, taking an unprecedented first-half lead.

Some of the hardcore Ajax fans lobbed flares onto the turf at the Johan Cruyff arena in Amsterdam. The game had already been suspended twice and the referee had no choice but to abandon the match.

The violence spilled out of the ground, as furious Ajax fans smashed the entrance to the stadium and fought running battles with mounted police armed with tear gas to disperse the crowd. 

The ugly scenes represented a new low in the crisis suffered by Ajax, a four-time European Cup winner struggling both on and off the field.

With only five points from four games, the 36-time Dutch champions are having their worst start to an Eredivisie season since 1964/65.

Reports of a power struggle in the boardroom have been all over the Dutch press, and the crowd had barely been cleared from the ground than Ajax sacked their director of football Sven Mislintat.

He had been under investigation for a potential conflict of interest during a summer signing, but the club justified the sacking by saying Mislintat had a “lack of broad support within the organisation.”