The chairman of police union ACP has called for fans to be banned from Eredivisie matches to free up police officers to patrol the streets.

Wim Groeneweg told the Telegraaf that both police and the public were concerned about a shortage of neighbourhood beat officers, and removing the need for crowd control on match days was one possible solution.

He referred to a recent survey by the statistics agency CBS in which more than half of people said they never or rarely saw police officers in their neighbourhood.

‘The capacity of the police is fragile and that’s concerning,’ Groeneweg said. ‘We need to prioritise. If we only make choices that don’t cause more inconvenience, we won’t make any choices. One of those is to deploy fewer police at football matches.’

Hessel Koster, spokesman for the national police division, said the force increasingly needed to make smart choices based on where officers were most needed.

‘That also means we’ll have to say no to certain events, because other police work comes first,’ he said.