Because today is the day of the Dutch Cup Final, I would like to share with you, in two parts, the story of my first Cup Final, Roda JC - Heerenveen in 1997.
I missed the first four minutes as it turned out I could not see when I covered my eyes in an attempt to pretend I was somewhere entirely different. Somewhere where my team had not come so desperately close to the finish line only to surely fall tragically short. I was not familiar with, nor did I expect, any type of success. This is what went through me in the moments before kick-off:
- No way are winning this. We’ve never won a thing. Second place doesn’t count. We’ve played this Cup Final, what, like three times before. Did we ever win? Didn’t think so. We can’t win this. They’ve got Igor Korneev. Igor Korneev! That guy came from FC Barcelona, we’re never going to win against a team who has a player from FC Barcelona.
- Goddamnit , this is so like Roda. They’ve come this far and now they’re going to tragically fall short. Man, I wished we hadn’t even come this far, at least then I wouldn’t have to be so fucking disappointed in a while. Typical. Bloody typical. Why do I still even support this club? How dare they lose when I’m in the stadium. When I came all the way to see my first Final.
- Well let’s hope they’ll at least put up a fight. That’s the least I can ask for, right? There’s some honour in going down swinging, I guess. Just, please, make it a game. I know you’re not going to win, but at least don’t embarrass me. Yourselves! Don’t embarrass yourselves, of course. Just, - god I hate saying this – go out there and give it your best shot. Make me proud?
- Oh my god there he is. Igor fucking Korneev. That’s it. Jesus Christ I wish I hadn’t gone to this stupid game. Why do this to myself? Disappointment tastes bad enough through a tv-screen, but this is going to be a whole other level.
- Ah well. At least we made the final, that’s pretty nice. At least we’re still in there and not making total idiots out of ourselves. At least we’re…we’re up? We’re up 1-0?
I don’t remember a whole lot of the game itself. I remember singing the anthem, waiving the cheap plastic flags that were deposited on each seat, I remember most goals being scored on the other side of the pitch, but I don’t recall the actual goals themselves. And I remember, after my first Cup Final, walking out of de Kuip victorious.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Cup Season! Part 1: When Blind Enthousiasm Clouds Proper Judgement
Because today is the day of the Dutch Cup Final, I would like to share with you, in two parts, the story of my first Cup Final, Roda JC - Heerenveen in 1997.
The barhand-turned-bouncer and his mother had braced themselves for the scuffles that regularly accompanied the climax of the Dutch cup, the final in Rotterdam. Their bar lay near ‘de Kuip’, the impressive Feyenoord stadium in which the final of the Dutch cup is held every year, in an attempt to mirror the tradition of the English FA Cup. From behind their reinforced bar, ready for whatever the visiting fans would, possibly quite literally, throw at them, they had looked on curiously as fans of the teams who had made the final made their way to the stadium without any of the hostilities they had gotten so used to over the past years. When they saw a modified cycle, which five SC Heerenveen fans had driven to Rotterdam all the way from Friesland, pass, the perplexed bar owner ordered her massive son to open the door and see what the hell was going on.
When he did, I darted in past him – a feat in itself – and was followed by Roda JC and SC Heerenveen fans alike. When I returned from the bathroom, I saw the bar owner explain to my parents that this was not exactly what they had expected would happen.
“We open up every year on the day of the final and we wait to see which team’s fans are the first to arrive. And then he makes sure fans from the other team don’t get in”. She nodded at her offspring. He liked that fans of both teams appreciated him for this annual position of authority, and felt a sense of responsibility for the gentle proceedings of this particular afternoon. To him, the only possible explanation of this state of fan pacification was his bulky presence. To some extent, he may have been right. However, the fact that Roda JC and Heerenveen fans can be compared to the warmongering equivalent of Iceland and Switzerland, respectively, might also have been the cause of this mutual state of benevolence.
As his mother told us this in her heavy Rotterdam accent that her son was such a sweet, stand-up type of guy, I urged my parents to leave for the stadium. I was about to see my first cup final and I didn’t want to miss a single minute of it.
The barhand-turned-bouncer and his mother had braced themselves for the scuffles that regularly accompanied the climax of the Dutch cup, the final in Rotterdam. Their bar lay near ‘de Kuip’, the impressive Feyenoord stadium in which the final of the Dutch cup is held every year, in an attempt to mirror the tradition of the English FA Cup. From behind their reinforced bar, ready for whatever the visiting fans would, possibly quite literally, throw at them, they had looked on curiously as fans of the teams who had made the final made their way to the stadium without any of the hostilities they had gotten so used to over the past years. When they saw a modified cycle, which five SC Heerenveen fans had driven to Rotterdam all the way from Friesland, pass, the perplexed bar owner ordered her massive son to open the door and see what the hell was going on.
When he did, I darted in past him – a feat in itself – and was followed by Roda JC and SC Heerenveen fans alike. When I returned from the bathroom, I saw the bar owner explain to my parents that this was not exactly what they had expected would happen.
“We open up every year on the day of the final and we wait to see which team’s fans are the first to arrive. And then he makes sure fans from the other team don’t get in”. She nodded at her offspring. He liked that fans of both teams appreciated him for this annual position of authority, and felt a sense of responsibility for the gentle proceedings of this particular afternoon. To him, the only possible explanation of this state of fan pacification was his bulky presence. To some extent, he may have been right. However, the fact that Roda JC and Heerenveen fans can be compared to the warmongering equivalent of Iceland and Switzerland, respectively, might also have been the cause of this mutual state of benevolence.
As his mother told us this in her heavy Rotterdam accent that her son was such a sweet, stand-up type of guy, I urged my parents to leave for the stadium. I was about to see my first cup final and I didn’t want to miss a single minute of it.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
The Cat's Meow: European Fields, the Landscape of Amateur Football (van der Meer, Kuper, 2006)
In The Cat’s Meow, I hope to discuss whatever football related films I have seen or books I have read, with you, my readers. These particular books or films do not have to be very recent. If you have seen or read the film or book on hand, please tell me what you thought of it in the comments. Tips are also very welcome.
Today’s edition of the Cat’s Meow is about European Fields, by Hans van der Meer. It’s a Dutch publication, but that really shouldn’t be any problem for any international readers because it’s a photo book. It has a small Dutch introduction, by Simon Kuper, but after that, the universal goodness begins.
In European Fields, van der Meer attempts to recapture an image of football that he believes was lost with the increased global media attention payed to the sport. So like Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, it offers an entirely different perspective on the game. Not a new one, mind you, but one that we all used to know and love but then lost sight of when every game started being captured by dozens of cameras.
Hans only has one camera, and his trusted ladder to work with. He’s scoured the European amateur football fields and positioned himself somewhere along the pitch and then waited. He waited for a moment, but not necessarily the most action packed situation. Sometimes it’s just a lonely keeper surveying the field, trying to retrieve the ball from a nearby moat, or a minute of respectful silence before kick-off in Spain. In most pictures, van der Meer integrates the football field with the landscape surrounding it and then present it as one.
So European Fields is an ode, really. Van der Meer himself declares wanting to find football ‘as far away from the Champions League is possible’, and he succeeds. Every month, one of his photographs was displayed in the now defunct Dutch magazine Johan, and it was eventually put on exhibition in Rotterdam’s Boijmans van Beuningen Museum.
I got this book for my last birthday and I show it to everyone who I don’t mind thinking of me like the football nut I am. It shows football in its absolute simplicity, its honesty and its grassroots beauty.
My personal favourites: page 24, Budapest, and page 19, Loumarin (France)
Europese Velden at Bol.com
ISBN # 9074159877
Today’s edition of the Cat’s Meow is about European Fields, by Hans van der Meer. It’s a Dutch publication, but that really shouldn’t be any problem for any international readers because it’s a photo book. It has a small Dutch introduction, by Simon Kuper, but after that, the universal goodness begins.
In European Fields, van der Meer attempts to recapture an image of football that he believes was lost with the increased global media attention payed to the sport. So like Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, it offers an entirely different perspective on the game. Not a new one, mind you, but one that we all used to know and love but then lost sight of when every game started being captured by dozens of cameras.
Hans only has one camera, and his trusted ladder to work with. He’s scoured the European amateur football fields and positioned himself somewhere along the pitch and then waited. He waited for a moment, but not necessarily the most action packed situation. Sometimes it’s just a lonely keeper surveying the field, trying to retrieve the ball from a nearby moat, or a minute of respectful silence before kick-off in Spain. In most pictures, van der Meer integrates the football field with the landscape surrounding it and then present it as one.
So European Fields is an ode, really. Van der Meer himself declares wanting to find football ‘as far away from the Champions League is possible’, and he succeeds. Every month, one of his photographs was displayed in the now defunct Dutch magazine Johan, and it was eventually put on exhibition in Rotterdam’s Boijmans van Beuningen Museum.
I got this book for my last birthday and I show it to everyone who I don’t mind thinking of me like the football nut I am. It shows football in its absolute simplicity, its honesty and its grassroots beauty.
My personal favourites: page 24, Budapest, and page 19, Loumarin (France)
Europese Velden at Bol.com
ISBN # 9074159877
Thursday, May 3, 2007
A Difference Like Between Day and Night
It couldn’t possibly have been the torrential rain. It shouldn’t bother the English, nor their game. Especially not when they’re from Manchester, where, and this may or may not be true, it always rains. Or at least I think so. But it couldn’t have been the rain.
It might have been the stadium. At certain times during the game, the camera seemed to wobble up and down a little. That wasn’t due to a cameraman with a sporadic case of severe Parkinson’s. That was the stadium moving up and down a little. So it might have been the stadium. But certainly, Manchester are used to a roaring stadium.
It may have been the flurry of injuries. It can be difficult to cope with such a string of bad fortune. But there were fewer injured players than last time around. So it couldn’t have been that, either.
Inexperience, possibly? Certainly not. A side fielding van der Sar, Giggs and Scholes does not lack experience. They know what it takes to win, and, more importantly, they know how to lead. Even the inexperience of young guns like Rooney and Ronaldo is relative. Both have played two major - and very eventful – tournaments. They know the turmoil that comes with big matches like these.
It might have been a combination of all of these things, but truthfully, it was something else entirely. The difference between the first and the last game wasn’t the rain, it wasn’t the stadium, the injuries or the inexperience. It was Milan. Jack van Gelder, a Dutch football presenter, confronted a slightly confused and/or intimidated Dirk Kuijt via telephone after the game. Kuijt told him he had never seen Man U play as poorly as tonight, and van Gelder abruptly and rightfully interrupted the Liverpool striker.
‘But can’t you only play as well as your opponent lets you?’
Kuijt, and everybody else who saw Milan’s absolutely gorgeous perfect first half yesterday, could only agree.
I'm rather swamped as of late, but check back Saturday for another edition of The Cat's Meow and Sunday, the day of the Dutch Cup final, for a two-post piece on my first Cup Final experience
It might have been the stadium. At certain times during the game, the camera seemed to wobble up and down a little. That wasn’t due to a cameraman with a sporadic case of severe Parkinson’s. That was the stadium moving up and down a little. So it might have been the stadium. But certainly, Manchester are used to a roaring stadium.
It may have been the flurry of injuries. It can be difficult to cope with such a string of bad fortune. But there were fewer injured players than last time around. So it couldn’t have been that, either.
Inexperience, possibly? Certainly not. A side fielding van der Sar, Giggs and Scholes does not lack experience. They know what it takes to win, and, more importantly, they know how to lead. Even the inexperience of young guns like Rooney and Ronaldo is relative. Both have played two major - and very eventful – tournaments. They know the turmoil that comes with big matches like these.
It might have been a combination of all of these things, but truthfully, it was something else entirely. The difference between the first and the last game wasn’t the rain, it wasn’t the stadium, the injuries or the inexperience. It was Milan. Jack van Gelder, a Dutch football presenter, confronted a slightly confused and/or intimidated Dirk Kuijt via telephone after the game. Kuijt told him he had never seen Man U play as poorly as tonight, and van Gelder abruptly and rightfully interrupted the Liverpool striker.
‘But can’t you only play as well as your opponent lets you?’
Kuijt, and everybody else who saw Milan’s absolutely gorgeous perfect first half yesterday, could only agree.
I'm rather swamped as of late, but check back Saturday for another edition of The Cat's Meow and Sunday, the day of the Dutch Cup final, for a two-post piece on my first Cup Final experience
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Phillip Cocu Was Very Good at Football.
Because of the absolutely exhausting finish to the Dutch season, I haven’t gotten around to posting about something that truly deserves mention. On Sunday, PSV not only won the championship, but also avoided having to partake in the play-offs for the Dutch Champions League Qualifier ticket, meaning their season ended after the game against Vitesse. This has some implications, none bigger than that Phillip Cocu has played his last game in a PSV shirt.
Astonishingly versatile, a true leader both on and off the field, a strategist. A joy to watch, even when he decided to play as anonymously as possible to help his team.
Because the details of his career and his accomplishments are probably already known among the most of you (and if not, shame on you), I am not going to write all that down and make his stats into my argument of why Cocu is, perhaps, the best Dutch football player since Marco van Basten. Instead, I’ll tell you why he is because of something I saw very recently.
A few weeks ago, when PSV had almost completely imploded and apparently whisked away its chances at a third consecutive Dutch crown, I found myself in Eindhoven. Kick-off in the Philips Stadion was about to happen, for what could be the final nail in PSV’s coffin. PSV hosted FC Twente, who were and are having a marvellous season, and had to win. Much, much earlier in the season, the two had faced off in Enschede, and PSV hadn’t, in fact, won. Twente had. Considering both that result and recent form, a victory for PSV was far from certain. But it came.
By this time I should probably explain what I was doing in Eindhoven on that night. I was staring at two screens, each no larger than a CD-case, in a truck just outside of the stadium, and occasionally rewinding what I saw so it could be beamed into people’s living room in slow-motion. The screens I watched were the incoming feeds of Camera 1 and Camera 2. Camera 1 is the traditional overview camera, and camera 2 does close-ups from above. Because the director never needs a replay of the first camera, my primary attention was focused, for more than 90 minutes, only on the space of play visible on camera 2.
Cocu ruled it.
In that small space, all game long, I saw Cocu running, tackling, coaching and passing. The camera had instructions to follow the ball, and Cocu was never far away. Whenever FC Twente’s Orlando Engelaar was unfortunate enough to find himself under the scrutiny of camera 2, he was quickly, subtly dispossessed by PSV’s captain. After Cocu won the ball himself, the cameraman who worked camera 2, more often than not, quickly had to pan along with yet another brilliant pass.
In the small space visible on camera 2, I saw Cocu completely locking down one of the most creative midfields in the Dutch league. I also saw him give an assist that was so unexpected, the camera only caught up with it a few seconds after it had been given, because he thought the pass would go somewhere else entirely. And even if Cocu wasn’t in sight, he somehow influenced whatever was. A bad pass was given, and a quick glance to camera 1 revealed what I didn’t see on camera 2: the pass was hurried because Cocu was closing in, or because he quickly covered the best option for the pass. I had never seen a performance like it.
On Sunday, I didn’t have to work in Eindhoven. Whichever colleague of mine did, stared at the camera 2 feed like I did a few weeks ago and on it, he or she saw Philip Cocu score PSV’s last goal of the season, which won PSV the title. There is a word for performances like Cocu's last Sunday and earlier against Twente. Greatness.
My only complaint? This year's final goal, although infinitly more imporant, wasn't nearly as pretty as last year's ;)
I’d appreciate it if maybe you would share your favourite Cocu memory in the comments section. Thanks a bunch in advance.
Astonishingly versatile, a true leader both on and off the field, a strategist. A joy to watch, even when he decided to play as anonymously as possible to help his team.
Because the details of his career and his accomplishments are probably already known among the most of you (and if not, shame on you), I am not going to write all that down and make his stats into my argument of why Cocu is, perhaps, the best Dutch football player since Marco van Basten. Instead, I’ll tell you why he is because of something I saw very recently.
A few weeks ago, when PSV had almost completely imploded and apparently whisked away its chances at a third consecutive Dutch crown, I found myself in Eindhoven. Kick-off in the Philips Stadion was about to happen, for what could be the final nail in PSV’s coffin. PSV hosted FC Twente, who were and are having a marvellous season, and had to win. Much, much earlier in the season, the two had faced off in Enschede, and PSV hadn’t, in fact, won. Twente had. Considering both that result and recent form, a victory for PSV was far from certain. But it came.
By this time I should probably explain what I was doing in Eindhoven on that night. I was staring at two screens, each no larger than a CD-case, in a truck just outside of the stadium, and occasionally rewinding what I saw so it could be beamed into people’s living room in slow-motion. The screens I watched were the incoming feeds of Camera 1 and Camera 2. Camera 1 is the traditional overview camera, and camera 2 does close-ups from above. Because the director never needs a replay of the first camera, my primary attention was focused, for more than 90 minutes, only on the space of play visible on camera 2.
Cocu ruled it.
In that small space, all game long, I saw Cocu running, tackling, coaching and passing. The camera had instructions to follow the ball, and Cocu was never far away. Whenever FC Twente’s Orlando Engelaar was unfortunate enough to find himself under the scrutiny of camera 2, he was quickly, subtly dispossessed by PSV’s captain. After Cocu won the ball himself, the cameraman who worked camera 2, more often than not, quickly had to pan along with yet another brilliant pass.
In the small space visible on camera 2, I saw Cocu completely locking down one of the most creative midfields in the Dutch league. I also saw him give an assist that was so unexpected, the camera only caught up with it a few seconds after it had been given, because he thought the pass would go somewhere else entirely. And even if Cocu wasn’t in sight, he somehow influenced whatever was. A bad pass was given, and a quick glance to camera 1 revealed what I didn’t see on camera 2: the pass was hurried because Cocu was closing in, or because he quickly covered the best option for the pass. I had never seen a performance like it.
On Sunday, I didn’t have to work in Eindhoven. Whichever colleague of mine did, stared at the camera 2 feed like I did a few weeks ago and on it, he or she saw Philip Cocu score PSV’s last goal of the season, which won PSV the title. There is a word for performances like Cocu's last Sunday and earlier against Twente. Greatness.
My only complaint? This year's final goal, although infinitly more imporant, wasn't nearly as pretty as last year's ;)
I’d appreciate it if maybe you would share your favourite Cocu memory in the comments section. Thanks a bunch in advance.
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