Blackburn's pre-season friendly with NEC Nijmegen scheduled for Sunday afternoon has been cancelled due to the threat of fan violence.
The decision was taken by the police and the local authorities in Nijmegen after it was claimed that Rovers supporters had been involved in disturbances in Deventer on Friday and Saturday.
In addition to the friendly, Nijmegen had been set to host a fans' open day, with the local authorities expecting around 8,000 visitors including families with young children.
A statement on the Gelderland-Zuid section of the politie.nl website read: "The deputy mayor of Nijmegen has decided to cancel the exhibition game between NEC and Blackburn Rovers. That match was due to be played today at 2.30pm during the annual open day of NEC.
"Supporters of the English club Blackburn Rovers were involved in rioting in Deventer on Friday and on Saturday there was a confrontation with supporters of NEC Nijmegen in the city.
"On the basis of serious signals to the police that a confrontation would take place again today, deputy mayor Henk Beerten in consultation with police, judiciary and mayor Hubert Bruls decided to cancel the match this afternoon.
"Today, some 8,000 visitors are expected at the open day of NEC which starts at 12.30pm, including many families with children.
"With the serious threat of unrest in the Goffertpark around the exhibition game, it is not sensible to play this game today."
A statement on the Championship club's official club website said: "Both clubs wish to express their disappointment that such a decision has been necessary."
NEC said in a statement that they regretted the decision to cancel the match, but understood it was taken with regard to safety
The news follows allegations of racist abuse against Newcastle's players during Saturday night's goalless draw with another Eredivisie side, ADO Den Haag.
The Magpies confirmed that they would be addressing the issue "privately" with ADO, with the matter expected to be resolved early next week.
Blackburn operations director Paul Agnew refused to rule out the club taking action against supporters involved in violence that resulted the friendly being cancelled.
"I was at the game on Friday and we heard there'd been a minor, minor disturbance between the two sets of fans,'' Agnew said. "On the back of that the authorities, including the police, decided to have a meeting ahead of this game at NEC.
"They had intelligence overnight on the Saturday to suggest there'd been some social networking messages both ways (and) that there could be potential violence.''
"It's too early to say,'' he said regarding possible sanctions. "We always take advice off the police and authorities, who have a much better handle on these things and report back to us. We've never put the blinkers on for this sort of thing. If something official came back then obviously we would act accordingly.
"It's something new to us. We've been in the UEFA Cup four times in the last 10 years and never had any problems before. We've got a very good record of fans travelling abroad. It's a great shame because a number of our fans will have paid money and taken time to come to these games over the weekend and I feel very sorry for them.''
