An explosive night of Dutch football

I was not expecting the fireworks, to be honest. But more on that later.

ADO Den Haag made the playoffs and is fighting for promotion so I went to my first Dutch football match Saturday night! And wow, it did not disappoint.

ADO, founded in 1905, stands for "Alles Door Oefening" which translates into Everything Through Practice. The club has fallen on tough times in recent years. They have had 10 coaches in the past decade. Relegation to the second division happened in 2021. Then fans rioted in 2022 and clashed with police after the club blew a 3-0 lead and lost a chance at promotion.

That led to the Dutch football association placing restrictions on attendance. You can’t just walk up and buy a ticket. I had to register an account online, and upload identification before I could buy one ticket. (Every fan has to be registered apparently.)

Note my name on the digital ticket. And the cloud of smoke … maybe that should have been a clue of what was to come.

Anyway, Bingoal Stadion (15,000 capacity) is located on the outskirts of Den Haag near the freeway interchange and a bunch of car dealerships. It’s not really located in spot friendly to public transit, which was surprising. After taking two trams, I headed off for a 20 minute walk with a hoard of under-30 men. At least 10 of them immediately stopped to pee in the bushes because they had been drinking heavily.

The stadium itself is a tin box from the outside and fairly standard inside. Different sections had their own entrance, so you can’t go elsewhere once you’re in. There’s these partitions between the sections.

I settled into a spot in the family section, which I thought might be less intense than the areas for hardcore fans. And I was right! For all of its struggles recently, ADO has some diehard fans.

“The Hague... is forever in our blood.”

Saturday’s match was against De Graafschap (the “Superfarmers”). ADO had won game one, 3-2, and the score of game two would determine who would advance since it uses an aggregate system. If ADO won or tied, they would advance. If De Graafschap won by two goals or more, they would move ahead. (I’m not sure how Dutch football breaks ties — it’s either extra time or a penalty shootout in many places.)

ADO put two on the board during the first half and the crowd was going crazy. They were one step closer to promotion to the first division! Halftime came with the score still 2-0.

A few minutes into the second half, De Graafschap decided to let off some steam:

The field was quickly covered in smoke and the players left. I was unsure if the game was going to continue but things cleared up after 15 minutes and play resumed.

De Graafschap played like a different team. ADO was on its heels, trying to run out the clock. That never works — and it didn’t last night. De Graafschap scored twice to even things up and it got tense in the stadium. Were we about to have a repeat of the riots from two years ago?

ADO fans kept their cool, although they did do this:

In the 71st minute, an ADO player picked up his second yellow card, which meant the club would play a man down for the rest of the match. De Graafschap pressed for the next 19 minutes, getting numerous shots on goal but coming up short. Then in extra time, an ADO player was injured and couldn’t be substituted because I think ADO had used up all of its substitutions.

So it was essentially 11 on 9 in extra time. It wasn’t looking good. De Graafschap would get a shot on goal and then ADO would clear the ball to the other side of the field to chew up the clock, because it was too short-handed to attack. The seven minutes of extra time felt three times that long, but when the whistle blew, ADO had escaped with a tie and, more importantly, advanced to the next round of the playoffs.