Joep Smeets, En Un Momento Dado

Just a short little post today. So much has already been written about Johan Cruijff’s sixtieth birthday here in Holland, but it would be simply wrong for me not to write a little about the greatest football player Holland has ever known, so I would like to tell you a story detailing exactly how important Johan is to us Dutch.

In 1999, weeks before the new millennium, I finally did it. I nagged so long my parents let me wander through Barcelona on my own. I was fourteen then, and terribly excited. I had never felt so grown-up in my life. Having already dragged my parents to the Camp Nou twice earlier in the week, I saw no reason not go there by myself this time. Nervously, I tried waving down a cab at the Plaça de Catalunya. When one eventually stopped, I decided to play this as cool as possible, and, in my best Spanish, instructed the driver to take me to Camp Nou.

Apparently, The fact that I was not actually Spanish had gone unnoticed, and the driver, having seen my Barcelona jersey, started ranting about the daily business of the club. It took him a few blocks to find out I was not very responsive because I didn’t understand a thing he said, upon which he inquired me to my country of origin. ‘Holanda’, I told him, somewhat nervously. He hit the breaks. He looked at me like I had just offended his entire family, and I was sure he was about to kick me out of his cab. As it turned out, my driver was not a particular fan of Dutchman Louis van Gaal, then head coach of my chauffeur’s pride and joy. He started screaming about van Gaal and Holanda in broken English, and I squeezed myself as far towards the door as possible.

Desperately, I looked around, and decided to clutch for a last straw. While the driver was in between breaths, the last one used for cursing van Gaal’s mother and the next one would have probably served roughly the same purpose, I decided to interrupt. ‘si…but…Cruijff?’, I managed to squeak? As suddenly as his massive temper arose, it subsided. He looked at me and gestured I had to open the glove compartment. I did, and I stumbled upon the worlds smallest FC Barcelona museum. Among the collection, glued to the glove compartment door, was an old, yellow sticker with El Salvador’s picture on it. ‘Ah, Holanda. Johan’, the driver said, to no one in particular. He shut the little compartment and drove me to the stadium, where, I still hope to this very day, he once marvelled at that young, scrawny enigma from Amsterdam.