Klaassen wanted to play on (‘otherwise they’ll have you’), Kökçü not offended by Tadic

“Now I’m fine again. When the game resumed, I had a throbbing feeling in my head and trouble focusing. Then you can want to continue tough, but that doesn’t help anyone.” He had himself substituted shortly after the resumption.

The maker of the winning 2-1 (which helped Ajax reach the cup final) had been through a lot at the Kuip, but it hadn’t been as crazy as this cup semifinal for him either.

“It’s always crazy matches here, but we didn’t expect this,” Klaassen said. “Maybe those nets weren’t such a bad idea after all.”

The match was eventually stopped for more than half an hour after the incident. In the catacombs, Klaassen indicated that he was just eager to finish the game.

“You don’t want to run away either. Then they have you and you don’t want to allow that. I didn’t necessarily feel unsafe either, but if something else had happened, it would have been done I think.”

Orkun Kökçü, the Feyenoord captain, was involved in the riot in the corner of the pitch, from where the object was thrown at Klaassen’s head.

“I didn’t even realize that at first, only when I saw blood on Klaassen did I understand that’s why we had to go in,” Kökçü explained. “You don’t wish that on anyone and something like that doesn’t belong in such a beautiful match.”

Watch post-match reactions from Feyenoord captain Orkun Kökçü, manager of professional soccer league affairs Jan Bluyssen and Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam, below.

Kökçü reacted fiercely at that riot to a provocation by Tadic, who made a gesture toward his mouth and the grass. For a moment it was thought to be a derogatory reference to Ramadan that Kökçü is currently doing.

Kökçü himself did not have that idea. “No,” he replied when asked if Tadic had insulted him. “It was a riot like there are more often and we should not make that bigger than it was.”

Feyenoord coach Arne Slot said he was ashamed of the events at the Kuip. “Of course you absolutely don’t want to see this on a soccer pitch. Let alone at the club where you are head coach.”

“It was an incredibly disappointing moment. And I could actually use much worse words for this, because ‘disappointing’ doesn’t cover it. It’s obviously terrible.”

Watch post-match reactions from coach Arne Slot and John Heitinga below.