Boys and coaches in one of the changing rooms at SC Buitenboys Boys and coaches in one of the changing rooms at SC Buitenboys Nieuw-Sloten is a relatively new town, which was originally intended to be the site of the Olympic Village for the 1992 games only for Amsterdam to lose out to Barcelona. It has about 15,000 inhabitants and, according to Achmed Baadoud, the chairman of the council of the Amsterdam borough Nieuw-West, it is regarded as "one of the example areas of our district." Although the teenagers that were arrested played for Nieuw-Sloten, some of them lived in other parts of Nieuw-West, an area with a diverse ethnic mix and not without its problems. Baadoud, who was born in Morocco, says that parental responsibility is a big issue there. "We have a group of parents that when they come with their children [to football], you really don't want to have them there. And we have another group of parents, they don't come. They even don't know in which team their children are playing; they deliver them at the door and they drive away. There are people who don't even know the teacher of their son or the team leader of the club. There is a lot of work to be done." He will not, however, accept that the finger of blame can be pointed at one group of people. "It's very easy to scream and to say it's a Moroccan problem. On the other hand, I don't want to say we have no problems. I am very open and clear that we have to discuss. Families really need help and I'm trying to open their eyes. But if you stand outside and you scream it's a problem, it won't be solved and it might create another problem – people will feel: 'We are not welcome.'" One thing that just about everyone in the Netherlands seems agreed on is that the country has a major issue with parental behaviour at children's matches. There is even a television programme, Heibel langs de lijn (Trouble Along the Field), where children can ring up and ask for their parents to be secretly filmed. The footage is then shown back to the parents, who sit alongside their son or daughter and, generally, cringe with embarrassment when they see themselves behaving hysterically and barking at their offspring from the sidelines. Things got so bad in 2007 an organisation called Sire, which is funded by the media industry and tries to raise awareness of social issues in the country, ran adverts on television showing parents behaving badly while watching their child play football. There was a growing feeling in the Netherlands that parents had become preoccupied with seeing their child win, rather than having fun. The campaign slogan was: "Give children their game back." Four years later, realising things had got little better, Sire carried out further research and released two more adverts, this time showing parents having a bad week at work and then taking out their frustration on their children on a Saturday. A spectator was filmed asking the angry parent: "Hey, how bad was your week?" The slogan at the end said: "Leave Monday to Friday at home on Saturday." Buitenboys have had their own issues with parents. "Before the incident with Richard we were already discussing here, around the table, the question of whether we should organise a weekend of games without any parents because some of the parents are crazy," Mueller says. "They don't know how to behave. They shout and they make arguments to the linesman and the referee. I know for sure that if we had games here without parents, 90% of the incidents would disappear. "We have boys and girls playing here, they are five- and six-year-olds, so they just want to kick the ball, they don't even know what winning is, but even there you get the parents shouting. We try to say to the parents: 'That's the wrong behaviour, be enthusiastic, be positive.' They don't listen. And we don't have the time to continue to watch them." Van der Burg, who is speaking in his office at Amsterdam's City Hall, accepts that parents must take a large share of the blame but also believes that those at the top of the game could help to improve standards by being better role models. "It's more than only parents. I think that professional football gives a bad example," he says. "If you see European games, international games, matches in Dutch football and the UK, you see bad examples not only of the players but also of the coaches. And there it starts, because all of those little boys see their heroes misbehave and they think it's normal." He also has another interesting theory for the lack of respect shown to referees and other people in positions of authority in the Netherlands. "The way we talk to our prime minister – I shouldn't think we should have to call him 'your excellency', but in the Netherlands everyone says 'Mark' [even in talk shows]. Yet in France, it's Le President. In the United States, it's Mr President," Van der Burg says. "In the Netherlands we certainly say more to a policeman than in a lot of other countries, so when it comes to authority we don't have the same respect. And I think one of the things we have to get back is respect for authority. It was better at one time and we lost it to policemen, personnel of the ambulance, the fire department – we have had some incidents there as well. That makes it a bigger problem than football. But, on the other hand, when you compare football with other sports, and even when you correct it for the figures because there are many more football players than in other sports, it's much more of a problem in football in terms of the number of incidents.

Boys and coaches in one of the changing rooms at SC Buitenboys

Nieuw-Sloten is a relatively new town, which was originally intended to be the site of the Olympic Village for the 1992 games only for Amsterdam to lose out to Barcelona. It has about 15,000 inhabitants and, according to Achmed Baadoud, the chairman of the council of the Amsterdam borough Nieuw-West, it is regarded as "one of the example areas of our district."
Although the teenagers that were arrested played for Nieuw-Sloten, some of them lived in other parts of Nieuw-West, an area with a diverse ethnic mix and not without its problems. Baadoud, who was born in Morocco, says that parental responsibility is a big issue there. "We have a group of parents that when they come with their children [to football], you really don't want to have them there. And we have another group of parents, they don't come. They even don't know in which team their children are playing; they deliver them at the door and they drive away. There are people who don't even know the teacher of their son or the team leader of the club. There is a lot of work to be done."
He will not, however, accept that the finger of blame can be pointed at one group of people. "It's very easy to scream and to say it's a Moroccan problem. On the other hand, I don't want to say we have no problems. I am very open and clear that we have to discuss. Families really need help and I'm trying to open their eyes. But if you stand outside and you scream it's a problem, it won't be solved and it might create another problem – people will feel: 'We are not welcome.'"
One thing that just about everyone in the Netherlands seems agreed on is that the country has a major issue with parental behaviour at children's matches. There is even a television programme, Heibel langs de lijn (Trouble Along the Field), where children can ring up and ask for their parents to be secretly filmed. The footage is then shown back to the parents, who sit alongside their son or daughter and, generally, cringe with embarrassment when they see themselves behaving hysterically and barking at their offspring from the sidelines.
Things got so bad in 2007 an organisation called Sire, which is funded by the media industry and tries to raise awareness of social issues in the country, ran adverts on television showing parents behaving badly while watching their child play football. There was a growing feeling in the Netherlands that parents had become preoccupied with seeing their child win, rather than having fun. The campaign slogan was: "Give children their game back."
Four years later, realising things had got little better, Sire carried out further research and released two more adverts, this time showing parents having a bad week at work and then taking out their frustration on their children on a Saturday. A spectator was filmed asking the angry parent: "Hey, how bad was your week?" The slogan at the end said: "Leave Monday to Friday at home on Saturday."
Buitenboys have had their own issues with parents. "Before the incident with Richard we were already discussing here, around the table, the question of whether we should organise a weekend of games without any parents because some of the parents are crazy," Mueller says. "They don't know how to behave. They shout and they make arguments to the linesman and the referee. I know for sure that if we had games here without parents, 90% of the incidents would disappear.
"We have boys and girls playing here, they are five- and six-year-olds, so they just want to kick the ball, they don't even know what winning is, but even there you get the parents shouting. We try to say to the parents: 'That's the wrong behaviour, be enthusiastic, be positive.' They don't listen. And we don't have the time to continue to watch them."
Van der Burg, who is speaking in his office at Amsterdam's City Hall, accepts that parents must take a large share of the blame but also believes that those at the top of the game could help to improve standards by being better role models. "It's more than only parents. I think that professional football gives a bad example," he says. "If you see European games, international games, matches in Dutch football and the UK, you see bad examples not only of the players but also of the coaches. And there it starts, because all of those little boys see their heroes misbehave and they think it's normal."
He also has another interesting theory for the lack of respect shown to referees and other people in positions of authority in the Netherlands. "The way we talk to our prime minister – I shouldn't think we should have to call him 'your excellency', but in the Netherlands everyone says 'Mark' [even in talk shows]. Yet in France, it's Le President. In the United States, it's Mr President," Van der Burg says.
"In the Netherlands we certainly say more to a policeman than in a lot of other countries, so when it comes to authority we don't have the same respect. And I think one of the things we have to get back is respect for authority. It was better at one time and we lost it to policemen, personnel of the ambulance, the fire department – we have had some incidents there as well. That makes it a bigger problem than football. But, on the other hand, when you compare football with other sports, and even when you correct it for the figures because there are many more football players than in other sports, it's much more of a problem in football in terms of the number of incidents.

Posted in: