Death of a linesman

The Guardian reports on the death of linesman Richard Nieuwenhuizen, beaten up at an amateur game in early December and what it means for Dutch football:

Yet moments after the players started shaking hands with the three volunteer officials, Nieuwenhuizen was knocked to the floor, then punched and kicked in the head by several of the Nieuw-Sloten team. Parents immediately ran on to the pitch to try to defuse the situation and get some control. Nieuwenhuizen eventually got back to his feet but he was knocked to the floor for a second time. Witnesses report that one of the Nieuw-Sloten players then took off his shirt, presumably to make it harder for him to be identified, before kicking Nieuwenhuizen while he was on the ground and then running off. Mykel, Nieuwenhuizen’s son, saw everything.

As the article makes clear, the case has become a rorschach blotch for every Dutch anxiety about modern society: racial tension, lack of respect for authorities, youth gone wild, etc. The victim was a white man, a linesman from Almere, the perpetrators allegedly are Moroccan boys from one of the Amsterdam districts with a high level of Dutch-Moroccans. Mix that in with the fact that the victim was a linesman, an authority figure, when there has been a string of horrible assaults of authority figures — police officers, first aid workers, ticket inspectors — in the last few years and you got an incident that was tailor made for Geert Wilders to exploit. Which he promptly did, but which fortunately hasn’t gained much traction

A tragedy such as this of course needs to be taken seriously, though I do think it’s easy to overreact to it as a country or a sport. The vast majority of football fans and players at all levels of Dutch football are decent people and to make great moral judgments out of one incident, no matter how tragic, seems wrong.

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