Thursday evening’s Belgian Cup final-16 match between Sporting Anderlecht and Standard de Liège was marred by crowd trouble. With Anderlecht two-up and Standard a man down, visiting Standard supporters began tearing up seating and throwing it down onto the Anderlecht fans. Fireworks were also thrown and the match referee decided to bring proceedings to a temporary halt around with around 5 minutes still on the clock.
Play resumed around 10 minutes later with the score remaining at 2-0 to Anderlecht. With Anderlecht due to play Standard in the league on Sunday there were fears that violence could flare up again before, during and after Sunday's game.
In order to go some way to try and prevent this Standard de Liège has now banned its fans from travelling to Brussels to watch the game in RSC Anderlecht’s Lotto Park.
In a statement Standard de Liège said that "We have decided to take preventative and repressive measures. Standard roundly condemns the incidents that took place between the two groups of supporters during the match between Anderlecht and Standard”.
"In the light of these incidents we have decided to take preventative and repressive measures and to not allow our supporters to travel to Anderlecht on Sunday 10 December. The club will study the incident further in the coming days before a decision is taken on further measures”.
Standard de Liège faces a possible fine and having to play matches without spectators as punishment for their fans’ misbehaviour.