It is often said that football is nothing without fans. Tonight, this was put to the test as Ajax welcomed Sparta Rotterdam to the Johan Cruyff Arena.<\/p>\n
Ajax Ultras, the F-side were banned<\/a> for one home match in the Eredivisie.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The club agreed to the punishment after the fireworks display by the supporters\u2019 group during the home match against FC Groningen last November.<\/p>\n That match was abandoned after just six minutes and played out a few days later behind closed doors where Ajax eventually ran out 2-0 winners.<\/p>\n However, Ajax attempted to pre-empt the punishment to avoid a ban and subsequently kept the F-side empty during the 2-0 home win against Feyenoord in December.<\/p>\n To some extent, this self-punishment worked.<\/p>\n The prosecutor for professional football took this into account when determining the penalty and Ajax avoided harsher ramifications.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n That has led to the strange spectacle tonight, where the lower tier of the F-side is empty in a sold-out stadium as Ajax look to lift themselves to within two points of Feyenoord in second with a win.<\/p>\n However, they have to overcome a Sparta Rotterdam sitting eighth and looking for their first win in six games, cheered on by a raucous away following.<\/p>\n Get Football<\/a> | Oscar O\u2019Mara<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is often said that football is nothing without fans. Tonight, this was put to the test as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[749,199,22818,22817,200,18742],"class_list":{"0":"post-40283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-amsterdam","8":"tag-ajax","9":"tag-amsterdam","10":"tag-fc-groningen","11":"tag-johan-cruyff-arena","12":"tag-netherlands","13":"tag-sparta-rotterdam"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116230155557369190","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}