The Pride of the North
FC Groningen 1-0 FC Utrecht (17:12:11)
West Brom fan Thomas Archer sidesteps the usual Dutch red tape for a rare chance to see FC Groningen...
As anyone who has travelled to watch football in the Lowlands, and The Netherlands in particular, you will be aware that it is easier to get a visa to enter North Korea than to enter most football grounds to watch some Eredivisie action. Grounds including SC Heerenveen and Roda JC are notoriously hard to get tickets for due to their clubcard policy and nearly always sell-out. Even for away games following my local team ADO Den Haag it is near impossible to get a ticket for an away game due to an avalanche of regulations including all manner of restrictions on travelling however this rant is for another day.
Imagine my delight when one of those supposed ‘hard-to-get-into’ grounds, the Euroborg in Groningen, flung its doors open for the game against FC Utrecht, a pleasant surprise considering most games that are allocated as vrijeverkoop or free sale generally involve watching the home team play against one of Excelsior, VVV or RKC. Even more surprising considering the problems that had engulfed FC Utrecht’s previous game against FC Twente where a bout of firework throwing between both sets of fans and pitched battles both inside and outside of the ground lead to the police firing shots at the Utrecht fans and numerous arrests.
FC Groningen had been high up on my wish list of ground visits mainly down to their attractive football that has seen the likes of Luis Suarez and Tim Matavz, to name a few, pass through their doors in recent years. The two and a half hour drive gave me a choice of options to travel to the game, I decided to go over the Afsluitdijk, a 40 kilometre dyke that keeps most of The Netherlands above water (mainly due to the fact that I could drive 130 km/h due to new speed limits in the Netherlands, UK take note), however given that it was pitched black (I passed on stopping off at the statue of Dr. Lely, the man responsible for the aforementioned dyke) and there was nothing in a twenty five mile radius, I had to make do with listening to West Brom making hard work of Blackburn on Talksport.
Having reached Groningen and parked my car in the huge free car park only 100 metres from the ground, I walked through an underpass that looked dangerously like Danny Dyer could be hiding around the corner and the stadium came into view. From the outside, the ground looked like one huge warehouse containing numerous restaurants, bars and even a cinema. After scouting the local chip van, I went to pick up my tickets from the kassa via the Fanshop and a purchase of the home team’s scarf and some much needed gloves for the night! Upon entering the ground I immediately regretted my decision not to purchase some chips and a kroket from the chip van as I discovered that the Euroborg, as with the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen and the much maligned Amsterdam ArenA, operated a coin system whereby you have to purchase coins to use at the food outlets. Much to my surprise though I was able to acquire some chips and a coke and then get change from my five euros.
First impressions inside the Euroborg were great. There were long gangways underneath the stand where you could easily watch the game although the mass of lime green seats were a bit garish. The reason for the vrijeverkoop of the tickets was the lack of away fans who had to travel a 400 km round trip for an 8.45 kick-off on a Saturday night and thus my ticket was within one of the caged sections usually reserved for the away fans or used as a buffer zone. There were just over a hundred away fans that had travelled on the buscombi and with their own cars. Those travelling with their own cars were made to stop at a service station between Utrecht and Groningen at a set time before the game in order to exchange their tokens for match tickets. This is a system that is operated for a lot of the games in Holland with the aim being to stop away fans turning up in the town where the game will be held and running riot. Although some groups of fans have managed to get around this by fighting after the game rather than before, the most recent being last season when ADO Den Haag fans travelled to Alkmaar for their game against AZ. On the way home the ADO fans decided to travel to the next motorway junction and head back to Alkmaar where the inevitable happened and as a result now have to take a Buscombi to Alkmaar this season.
The Dark Knights. Caged in there somewhere, honestly, are around 100 FC Utrecht fans.
The Groningen Fanatics
With the Utrecht fans in full voice and the Groningen Fanatics lighting flairs and bouncing up and down the game got underway. Groningen should have been leading 4-2 after only twenty minutes but both teams managed to butcher regular opportunities with Groningen’s Uruguayan striker David Texeira being the main culprit. The teams went in at half-time at 0-0 and I decided that watching the game through the Perspex of the protective cage was not a particularly great experience deciding instead to move downstairs to the gangway behind the lower tier and spent the rest of the game standing with hundreds of other fans who had the same idea without any bother from the stewards.
The deadlock was broken by Texeira just after the hour mark to send the Groningen fans into rapture. The Fanatics soon began to crank up the noise level and began to bounce into one another whilst singing Dutch harcore songs. Despite late efforts from Rodney Sneijder (brother of) and Franck Demouge it was in vain for FC Utrecht who lost the game 1-0. There were some impressive displays on show and it won’t be long before Groningen’s centre-back Virgil van Dijk moves onto bigger things or an Oranje cap whilst Serbian attacking midfielder Dusan Tadic showed glimpses of talent to suggest he is far too good to be playing Eredivisie football for much longer.
Texeira scores; players form human pyramid; fanatics go wild; Hair Bear Bunch applaud.
Just in time for Christmas. I'll have... let's see: 1 x toothbrush, 1 x ice scraper and some bunting.
Overall a great experience, I would rank the Euroborg as the second best ground to watch football in Holland behind Feyenoord’s atmospheric De Kuip. Add to that reasonable food prices and the possibility to watch the game whilst standing on the concourse at the back of the bottom tier, the Euroborg should be part of any ground hopping itinerary in Holland.
