Holland's fixture fix-up

If it was up to Mayor Thom de Graaf of Nijmegen, NEC would have started next season with five away games. The annual summer festival in the middle of July - with as much as a million visitors on a good day - asks for the full capacity of the police force.

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Mayor Thom de Graaf of Nijmegen (R)

This means all the city cops take their holidays in August, which results in a shortage of uniforms to guard the safety of supporters at the Eredivisie games during that month. In Holland, a Mayor can ban a game when he believes safety is not guaranteed; but when the fixture list came out last week, NEC were still handed no less than three home games in the first month of the season.

The Mayor allowed two of them but refused to give his permission for NEC v FC Utrecht on the Friday the 21st. This means NEC have to look for an alternative ground or a new date for their match and, if they don't succeed, they are in danger of forfeiting 0-3 for being unable to stage the match.

This is the result of years of meddling with the fixture list of the Eredivisie. Not only the Mayor has a say, but the Dutch railway company NS and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as the stadium owners, who can all compose lists of dates which are unsuitable to schedule games.

For instance, Vitesse of Arnhem hires the Gelredome Stadium for their home matches. The Gelredome is also a venue for musical events with which it can earn a lot more money than with football games. Last year the organising plc submitted some twenty weekends to the KNVB in which the stadium was unavailable for Vitesse as Madonna, Whitney Houston or Coldplay were playing the stadium.

According to director Henk Kesler of the KNVB, which is responsible for the league schedule, Vitesse were on the verge of losing their licence to play professional football if organising a home match for them proved so difficult. Finding another ground was his suggestion.

When Kesler was appointed in 2000 he clearly stated that his big aim was the streamlining of the match programme. All clubs should have played the same amount of games after any given weekend.

The first ever encounter in Dutch football was played on Tuesday 2, November 1886 but, from then on, Sunday was the designated day for playing. With Saturday being a school and work day for a long time into the 20th century, there was no other choice. Although it did mean that in some regions football hardly caught on as people were not allowed to do anything but pray on a Sunday.

The introduction of the five day working week shortly before WWII gave the Bible Belt reprieve and, in no time, football clubs were founded who would only play on Saturday. Being part of the KNVB they had their own competitions and a national champion, but none of these clubs have ever gone professional; although the big clubs are said to have about a 1m euro budget and are strong enough to keep a mid-table position in the First Division. In 2010, two new top amateur leagues are to be introduced, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, which ends the current roster of no less than six top divisions. A play-off will decide on the Dutch Amateur champions, who may enter the professional league if they are interested.

For years there have been negotiations to make one top competition under the Eerste Divisie, but the refusal to play on Sundays has remained the stumbling block. The Saturday league has also managed to take a monopoly on the 4pm kick-off. While the British leagues and the German Bundesliga would not think of any other time, the KNVB have never dared to start games at tea-time because of the strong lobby of the Saturday leagues, who claim they will lose much of their income coinciding with professional matches.

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Ajax and Feyenoord fans have caused trouble.

This sidestep in the story explains why it is so difficult to make a fixture list. The weekend is not that long and one interesting timeslot is already taken. Secondly, it is customary that clubs from the same city alternate in home games, while public safety requires that supposed unruly fan groups should not meet each other at gas stations or railway lines as they travel to away games.

So Ajax and Feyenoord will hardly play in the same region at the same time. Then there are the earlier mentioned lists of unavailable dates of third parties, while the TV-schedule requires a weekly division of one game on Friday, four on Saturday and four on Sunday.

In the 1990s, all these demands turned the fixture lists into anarchy, leading to a league table in which some clubs could have played four games more than others. And that was even without postponements.

The University of Barcelona came to the rescue with a computer programme which can now make a proper schedule with at least nine games each weekend. Last year they delivered 70 versions as there were 471 trouble spots and only eight months available to play 34 rounds between the end of August and the start of the play-offs in early May.

Postponing games due to the weather or an unplayable pitch is hardly an option anymore as clubs are fined if they can't host a game. The low entertainment value of playing on muddy or dried-out soil takes second place over the importance of fulfilling the fixture.

With the World Cup coming up next summer, the schedule for this season will be tight again.