1986 Or Later

We knew they were there. Out there somewhere. We had read the names. Rooney. Never saw him play for Everton, although it could also have been Liverpool. Cesc Fabregas was supposed to be pretty good as well. In the Dutch league, more and more unfamiliar faces stood along the sidelines, while the number on the back of their shirts was being hoisted into the air by the fourth official for the very first time. Someone we knew came off, and someone we had never heard of would come on. It was inevitable. I don’t remember the exact first one. But all of a sudden there were hordes of them. Kids. Kids like us. Except with caps.

I realized I would never be a professional footbal player when I noticed just the extent of how much some kids were better than I was. I had always suspected this was the case, but it was gloriously confirmed to me in the Spanish tourist resort of Lloret de Mar. At eleven years of age, I found myself on the worst place of the pitch one could possibly be at the time; right midfield. My horror about playing there was not due to the position itself; I usually liked playing there. But on that summer day, after having seen the left midfielder I was about to play earlier that morning, I was contemplating faking an injury. The skinny Russian boy made my head spin for an entire game, often just enough to make me witness how he was already passing the last line of defense behind me. The only times I got close enough to even attempt winning the ball off him were when he chose to dribble directly towards me. After fifteen minutes, I didn’t even try to stop him anymore. I just pretended to. Whenever he took on one of our players, the rest of us stood and watched. As I could hardly applaud him while he was ballet-dancing his way through our defense, I asked my coach after the game if I could stay in the stadium for their next game. No problem. He was staying for it himself as well.

It was only after the game we found out that Dimitry - assuming no doubt falsely his name was Dimitry - had not been driven to the hot, scorching gravely excuse for a pitch, like we had. He walked. The sight of Dimitry and his teammateslining up for the ten kilometer march back to their hotel after their last game of the day made me lose every shred of hope I had ever entertained of being a professional player. Because if some of these kids would not make it, as their trainer had explained in broken English to our baffled coach, odds were pretty high neither would I.

But even while this knowledge had come to me at this relatively young age and I had had ample time to prepare myself for it, I had feared one particular moment. A voluntary sense of disinterest has surely made me miss some debuts in foreign countries, and also even some in my own. But if I had even the slightest suspicion, I decided to - in the immortal words of Edgar Davids - stick my head up my ass. If nobody pointed one out to me, I surely wasn’t going to look for one myself.

This could not go on forever, and of course, it didn’t. I noticed him immediately. My father was worried about Mateja Kezman, the gloved Serbian sniper with the white shoes of PSV Eindhoven. The arrogant bastard faced a defense who’s sole regular starter was often compared to Paolo Maldini. This comparison, however, sadly did not arise due to Gerrie Senden’s superior defensive abilities, but more to the fact that he, like Maldini, had never changed clubs in a very, very long career. But standing right next to Kezman stood Ibrahim Affelay. My father asked me if I knew who he was and this time there was nothing I could do but face facts, however painful they may be. I did know who he was. Very talented. Right-footed. PSV academy. But there was something else. Ibrahim Affelay was, and still is, significantly younger than I am.

1985, to me, is one of the major schisms of the 20th century. For a long time, I didn't know any better than that football players were born before it. My slightly older roommates and I checked the dates of birth from every latest prodigy to walk onto a football field. More and more, they were in the high 80's. Because of Dimitry, I had already accepted this would happen someday, but for whatever reason, Sunday afternoon made me cringe. Feyenoord started a player who was born a year after the Berlin wall fell. 5 years After Me. In the 90's.