Compare it to a balcony. The construction may be designed for a few people, says Ben Veenbrink, an external specialist member of the working group safe stadiums of the KNVB football association. “But it is not designed for you to jump on that balcony with twenty friends.”
In essence, that is the problem at PSV. The club announced on Tuesday that it would immediately halve the capacity of the box for away supporters after investigating the construction of the Philips stadium. It is possible that this will happen at more professional clubs in the short term now that a safety statement is part of the licensing requirements of the football association for the first time, those involved say.
1 Why is PSV reducing the capacity of the away section?
Two studies that PSV had carried out, by construction company BAM and another party, show that the stadium (from 1910) is largely safe, the club says. Only due to “the current use and behavior of the supporters” there is no complete certainty about the branch, says a club spokesperson. The “simultaneous, rhythmic jumping” of fans can potentially damage the construction of this section, PSV writes.
The capacity will be reduced from 1,600 places to 770. This will not yet affect the Europa League match against Sevilla on Thursday, because only a limited number of fans will come from Spain. For Sunday’s match against FC Twente, where the away section would be full, only half of the away supporters are now welcome. We are working on a reinforcement and, in the long term, on a permanent solution.
It’s not the first time this has happened. Heracles Almelo closed the branch a year ago because it was not safe enough. Heracles also had an investigation carried out, which showed that in extreme cases some parts of the grandstands did not meet the standards.
2 What prompted these investigations?
The subject has been very prominently on the agenda since October 2021, when the lower part of the section in NEC’s Goffert stadium collapsed under the pressure of jostling Vitesse fans. Miraculously, no one was injured. Research by engineering firm Royal HaskoningDHV showed that the grandstand collapsed due to design errors in combination with too many jumping spectators per square meter.
The then Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren then called on all stadium owners to have the structural safety of the standing stands assessed by an “expert constructor”. She also underlined that the load on the stands must meet the standard, namely: 5 Kilonewton (500 kg) per square meter.
“In other words: sit where you should sit and not otherwise,” says Veenbrink, who owns consultancy The Stadium Consultancy. “And that is of course very difficult.”
In June 2020, after part of the roof of the AZ stadium collapsed, the government already drew up a protocol: a manual that a safe stadium must comply with. But it was optional. “Then we as an industry said: we are going to make that mandatory in order to take our responsibility,” says Jan Bluyssen, competition affairs manager at the KNVB.
Last summer, the General Assembly of Professional Football decided that clubs must comply with this protocol for the first time from this season: it is part of the license requirement for clubs to be allowed to play professional football.
The deadline for this is next Wednesday, March 1. Part of the safety check is an inspection by a certified construction agency – a kind of MOT inspection. A ‘0 measurement’ of each stadium must be made before 1 March, says Bluyssen. “Most stadiums have something, such as PSV.” According to him, this shows that the system works.
Clearer direction was also needed. Inspections are carried out into the constructions of stadiums, but they are not always reliable, partly due to a lack of knowledge about football stadiums, wrote the Football and Safety Audit Team in 2016. Moreover, there are no specific rules for football stadiums, which have a different effect due to the jumping of supporters. use than most public buildings.
3 Are there enough checks now?
No. The protocol only assesses the infrastructure and structural safety, says Bluyssen. “It’s not about use yet. So how many people stand on a grandstand and start jumping, where it went wrong at NEC. And that stairs and escape routes are kept clear. We still have a long way to go in controlling this.”
The underlying problem is that, according to the Building Decree (2012), the load on the grandstands is not actually geared to massively frolicking fans. For both seating and standing, the current standard is 5 Kilonewton, says Veenbrink, while most stadiums are still designed according to the old standard of 4 Kilonewton (400 kg) for seating. In England and Germany it is 7.5 Kilonewton (750 kg), he says. In addition, many Dutch stadiums have created standing areas in recent years, which increases the pressure on the construction. “We have built stadiums that are for sitting,” says Bluyssen. “Only there is standing now.”
Vibration measurements showed that the impact of jumping causes body weight to increase by a factor of 2.5, says Veenbrink. So someone who weighs 100 kilos can have a load of 250 kilos on the structure.
Frank Wijnveld, former manager of the Philips stadium and member of the KNVB working group, is in favor of an independent organization such as they have in England: the Sports Grounds Safety Authority. It regularly tests the safety of sports stadiums. “It includes experts for all kinds of facets related to football stadiums,” says Wijnveld. “In the Netherlands, the construction is looked at, but how often is the chain on which the sound boxes hang that you sit under checked?”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of February 23, 2023
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