Neurotic Orange

Welcome to the Concrete Versailles

2008-04-30T21:26:00.001Z

Tomorrow night, at about midnight, I expect to drive past the Stade de France on my way to Madrid. Two Decembers ago, I’ve visited the stadium on the last day of my stay in Paris. Given the choice between the Musee Rodin and the UFO-like structure I had seen on my way into Paris, I opted for the latter. Rodin will wait, and I will be damned if the second stadium Barcelona ever won a Champions League final in will be torn down before I get to see it, much like the first was. I know, and knew then, that such a demolition isn’t in any way impending, but I figured to be better safe than sorry.

Saint-Denis, where the stadium is actually located, is rather dreary, which is as much of an understatement as is calling Paris quite nice. I arrived early, meaning I had to wait on the concrete and rain-soaked tundra’s around the stadium for about an hour, while a couple of local youths, which sounds incredibly more idyllic than it actually was, walked around menacingly without shirt. Because why wouldn’t they? Uneasily, I stepped into the one store that was open, which I remember being an enormous building filled with all sorts of gardening equipment.

After finally being allowed into the stadium I was confronted with the disappointment of encountering a stadium which did not remotely resemble a football stadium. I was welcomed by a kind French girl, dressed in an enormous purple-white cow’s outfit, to Milka’s “Dream of Snow”, an event whose attendance record did not seem to equal this girl’s enthusiasm.

But in spite of this initial disappointment, I did experience one particular moment which I would like to share with you. This December was the one in 2006, or as it is probably known in France: the year Zinedine Zidane retired. When my group was guided into the dressing rooms and we were asked if anybody had any questions, every single French person in my group, which was everyone but me, wanted to know the exact same thing; where did Zidane used to sit?

I hope this is the story I remember when I pass by the stadium tomorrow, and not the fact that this stadium is yet another example of the exodus clubs have undertaken in the past ten years to leave the neighbourhoods that made them great for more accessible but identity less slabs of concrete.

- it may or may not be clear to you after this post, but tomorrow I’m leaving on a rather ill-advised roadtrip to Madrid and back. This will take me a couple of days. I don’t know if I’ll have the time to post anything, but if I don’t, at least check back next week for a post on why I and my friends will be the undoing of Atletico Madrid.

It takes two, baby

2008-04-29T12:37:00.005Z

A couple of weeks ago, after the certainly thrilling match at Anfield between Arsenal and Liverpool, a Dutch pundit may have gotten a little carried away. When he proclaimed this match had been “quite possibly the best game ever to be played”, I decided it must have been getting late and I must have misunderstood because Liverpool – Arsenal, while obviously thrilling, hadn’t struck me as a particularly well-played game. It had its moments, most notably that wonderful rush by Theo Walcott and a rather spectacular final third, but the overall quality of the game hardly boggled the mind.

When I got up, I decided to watch the early afternoon replay of the show, only to see the same pundit look into the camera and utter the exact same line which had sent me to bed the night before. Quite possibly, the best game ever to be played. I was, however, pleasantly surprised by the reaction of one of the regular guests, a Dutch football writer who cried out in shock and called the game a defeat for the game of football. For the past few years, Liverpool has played a brand of football that first and foremost, prevents the other team from playing and only goes from there.

I have nothing against Liverpool as a club. They have a wonderful tradition and a beautiful stadium. But put me down on the list of people who find their current approach to the game rather cynical, effective as it may be.

That evening, I was slightly miffed to find the usually so beautifully playing Mancunians opt for something that eerily resembled this approach for their match against Barcelona, which is why I am writing this right now, a few hours before these two teams will meet again. I’m not saying Barcelona is the bastion of free-flowing attacking football it was a few years ago; besides lining up eleven players, they take a good dose of fear out on the pitch with them, it seems. Barcelona, and more specifically their coach had to get a result and United had come out boldly. Such a gathering of circumstances promised an outstanding game, but after a short while, United too, seemed to settle and became bent on, first of all, not losing, rather than winning. This made both perfectly good sense and a slightly dull football game.

Tonight, it will be decided if the final will be held between two teams out of Liverpool, Chelsea and now United, who have proven to be willing (and incredibly capable) to kill a game off if they believe it to be for their own good, or between one of the former two teams and a team which may fear losing more than anything else, but will at least run relentlessly head first into the brick wall that might spell their defeat. Unless Manchester shows why it has the reputation of what is slowly and sadly becoming the other, romantic but possibly futile style of English football, I hope it’s the latter.

Dance. Dance. Dance.

2008-04-27T22:59:00.005Z

It’s been a while since I last sang out loud in a football stadium, by which I mean sang and really meant it. It was a lot of fun to drone along with the 80’s synthesizer beats of Milan, sempre per te last November. My Spanish and Catalan really don't reach beyond Atleti Atleti and the first verse of the Barcelona Hymne, respectively and quite frankly, they don't have to for me to have a great time. I’m not a singer. I hardly ever clap and I am too damn awkward to do anything that even remotely resembles dancing in the stands.

I have never done any of this, or not overly exuberant in any case, because the last time I did I was kindly asked to knock it off. I was in Waalwijk, watching a Roda away game, when I mustered all the courage my seven year old body could muster and I started questioning, in song, the whereabouts of the stadium in which the game was taking place. After two lines, I was politely, yet urgently asked to sit down by an RKC fan. I did, and I haven't gotten up ever since.

Today I clapped. I sang. I jumped. I even extended my arms heavenwards and clenched my fists occasionally. After Roda went down 2-0, at times I was the only one in my section singing along with those in the crowd to whom singing louder than the opposing fans seems as important, if not more important, than the result itself. My throat is sore. I am typing this without the use of the ring finger on my right hand, which I injured earlier this week and which I’ve completely numbed down today by clapping. I’ve travelled 600 kilometres in the past two days to see my team lose. But when I look at the balance over the whole weekend, I may have lost a cup final and possibly the permanent use of my now slightly off-coloured finger, but I feel a little closer to a club which sometimes seems like half the world away.

And if that’s too damn sappy for you, then here are some match reports which bring you the cold, inescapable reality.

The silence before the battle

2008-04-27T08:51:00.005Z

- This is the worst part, the calm before the battle

- Oh, and then the battle's not so bad?

- Oh, right. I forgot about the battle

- Futurama, War is the H-Word

I am a child of the Nineties, so I’ve been gradually desensitized starting the day I first turned on a Nintendo. This means I can no longer really by moved by anything the 6 or 8 o’clock news throws at me. I have to resort to far more drastic measures to get my emotional fix, because anything that is merely real, or actual, just does not cut it for me anymore. There is but one medium left which penetrates deep down to my core, and that is film. More specifically, I am talking about the moment in any given film where the music slowly fades out and one character, preferably played by Al Pacino, let’s us all know what’s what.

WAAAAARGH!!!

I’m off to the Cup Final

Cup Fever!

2008-04-26T11:41:00.002Z

Catch it! Or, you know, don't. Whatever.

Only 28 more hours to go to the kick off of the final, and I'm scared shitless. This video was made at the 1997 Cup final which I've described in earlier posts, and still reduces me to tears a little.

I would walk 500 Miles - just to see the Dutch Cup Final

2008-04-26T01:17:00.004Z

It’s been just under a year since my last posts on this blog, and I cannot say much has changed in the world of Dutch football. Another ho-hum season, made only very slightly exciting by another too-little-too-late effort by Ajax, which was never a particularly formidable threat to PSV’s fourth straight championship.

Despite of the replica of last season sans the actual final-day excitement, there has been plenty to write about. I could give you tons of reasons why I haven’t, none of them particularly false or true, but let us not dwell on past mistakes or year-long absences. Fact is, a few people have encouraged me to pick this blog up again, for which I should probably thank them as well as hit them over the head with a blunt object, because I intend this blog to start taking up a considerable amount of my precious time once more, as it did when I first started it.

Their personal encouragements alone, however, would possibly not have been enough to make me to go through the embarrassing ritual of restarting a blog and falling down on my knees and beg you to start reading a blog written by someone who apparently can just take off for a year. It is the enormous contrast between the last two posts I’ve written and the one I could write today that brings me to actually write it.

In the previous two posts, you’ll find an account of my first Dutch cup experience. This Sunday, I’m about to visit my third Dutch cup final, as my team, Roda JC, have weaselled themselves through the backdoor into the apotheosis of Dutch Cup football. I could write about how miraculous it actually is that my team has even made the final; I could write about the explosion of joy and disorientation I felt when our goalkeeper scored in the dying seconds of an early-rounder to send it to extra time. I could write about the entire feel-good story which has led my team to the cup final. But I’m not going to.

For this is the first Dutch cup final that I will attend in which Roda plays the occupant of the stadium in which the game is annually contested, Feyenoord. In an effort to mimic the English tradition of hosting the Cup final in the same stadium every year, the Dutch Football association apparently considered the fact that Wembley-stadium is not home to one club in particular to be but a minor detail. There is, however, no national stadium in the Netherlands, so the site for the Dutch cup final was set in what is, without a single doubt, the prettiest stadium in all of Holland; de Kuip, in Rotterdam.

Effectively, this means that whenever Feyenoord reaches the Cup final, they play a home game. This simple formula is not acknowledged by everyone. Many will point out that a far greater number of fans from the other team is granted access to the stadium than during actual regular season home games. This much is true. The ticket allocation is even, with an even number of tickets going to the fans of both teams. The fact that the third part of the tickets, which does not go to the fans but is sold to Sponsors and such, will inevitably find their way to Feyenoord fans as well, is seldom mentioned. Theoretically, there is equal opportunity for fans of both teams to attain those tickets. Fans of the team which Feyenoord face, would, however, be seated in a section filled almost to the brim with Feyenoord fans. Sadly, this is still not a safe option in this country, a situation which, by the way, is not exclusive to Rotterdam.

So theoretically, this is not an away game for my team. I would, however, like to ask all of you to consider the number of times in which you could only get a ticket for your club’s home game, if you also bought the mandatory transportation ticket. Thousands of Roda fans have only been able to secure a ticket if they bought the so-called combi-ticket; this includes a ticket for the final and a ticket for the bus or train, which leaves from the south of Limburg to Rotterdam and returns there when the game is finished. This trip, which is completely escorted by police, is mandatory. If a fan wants to make this trip by himself, say, by car, he will not be able to get a ticket to the game.

This irks me in particular, because I don’t actually live anywhere near the city in which my club plays. In fact; I live about 150 kilometers closer to the site of the final, meaning I have to travel to Limburg, then by mandatory train to the final in Rotterdam and back to Limburg, and then back home again, which is positively the furthest and most elaborate I have ever travelled to see a game which is supposedly not an away game. Meanwhile, Feyenoord fans can go however they damn well please.

All of this, obviously, is a far cry from the previous Dutch cup finals I visited. Yet all I can and will do is rant about this right here and travel over 800 KM to see a game that takes place less than 45 minutes away from my house. Not an away game, indeed.

- So there it is: my first post in just under a year. Check back Sunday morning (this Sunday that is, not the one a year from now) for an extensive account of my pre-game nervous breakdown and Sunday evening for my post-game reflection. In the meanwhile, you’re welcome to discuss the current Cup hosting situation, over here or wherever really, in the comments section.

Cup Season! Part 2: Five Stages of Unjustified Anticipatory Grief

2007-05-06T11:51:00.000Z

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.

Cup Season! Part 1: When Blind Enthousiasm Clouds Proper Judgement

2007-05-06T11:28:00.000Z

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 Cat's Meow: European Fields, the Landscape of Amateur Football (van der Meer, Kuper, 2006)

2007-05-05T05:02:00.000Z

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

A Difference Like Between Day and Night

2007-05-03T10:56:00.000Z

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

Phillip Cocu Was Very Good at Football.

2007-05-02T09:56:00.000Z

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.

Well That Was...Different

2007-04-30T09:42:00.000Z

Sure, Ajax and PSV have dominated Dutch Football for as long as anyone can remember, and that’s not about to change. AZ is slowly getting to the level where they can compete, and Feyenoord is not so slowly falling behind. So on first glance, parity is not the word that would best describe the Dutch league. But we found it yesterday, parity-wise, the Dutch league comes closer than any other league in the world, and was indeed decided, very much so, up in the sky.

Olympique Lyon clinched the French title roughly halfway through the season, as did Celtic in Scotland and Internazionale in Italy. Chelsea is (only?) five points of the pace in England and Spain and Germany look like they will be close, but yesterday’s finish in the Dutch League redefined what a race to the wire really is. Check the bar to the right to try and keep up:

From the kick-offs at 2:30 PM, the ‘title’ changed hands five times. Five. Times. AZ started out as virtual champions, but quickly lost that honour when PSV scored twice in the first ten minutes of their game against Vitesse in Eindhoven. They also conceded one, meaning Ajax would be champions if they would just score once in Tilburg. And they did. AZ, meanwhile, messed things up very thoroughly and wouldn’t rear its head in the title race again until later in the afternoon. PSV needed to outscore Ajax overall, and did when they reached the 4-1 to take the virtual crown once more. Ajax, of course, would have none of that and went up 0-2, only to see PSV notch their fifth and go up again. AZ managed to equalize at 2-2, creating a situation in which, for the final twenty minutes of the game, a single goal by any of these three teams would have been enough to ensure them the championship.

It didn’t come, so PSV’s fifth and final goal of the day was enough to ensure them the championship. By one goal. Over 34 games.

Gracias to Niva for the kick ass graphic representation.

The Day of Reckoning is Here. Finally.

2007-04-29T07:16:00.000Z

Here is just a quick look at a couple of scenarios for today, the final day of the regular season of the Dutch football league.

Championship, and the automatic Champions League qualification that goes with it.

1 AZ 33 21 9 3 72 81 - 28
2 Ajax 33 22 6 5 72 82 - 35
3 PSV 33 22 6 5 72 70 - 24

AZ - AZ can win their first title in twenty-five years. They play away at lowly Excelsior, who's spot in the relegation play-offs is already a sure thing, so they are likely to rest some starters. A win, barring a blowout in Tilburg, will ensure AZ the championship, the first one since their last one twenty-five years ago outside of what the Dutch call the Traditional Top 3: Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV.

What to expect - You can never be sure about these things, and I've already told you I loathe making predictions, however I will say this: If AZ win the title, expect Louis van Gaal's head to increasingly turn purple, and ultimatly explode.

Ajax - Only two people in this world remain confident Ajax will win the title this afternoon, and those are Henk ten Cate and a crazy homeless guy on a corner somewhere in Amsterdam. Ajax plays away at Willem II, whom they have never had a particular problem with beating, and who's season, for all intents and purposes, is over. However, in case of even the most minimal of AZ wins, a 0-1, Ajax needs to score nine goals. They were well on their way to doing so last week, untill Ten Cate had the genius plan to sub a defender for an extra striker after twenty minutes while already being 3-0 up, and they quickly conceded two.

What to expect - Expect Ten Cate to frantically list every time either the field or a referee decision cost them points, Danny Blind-style. And guess what? They fired Blind. Just saying.

PSV - Were up eleven points months ago. Dropped those points. Idiots. In case of an AZ win, need to score at least ten. Not going to happen. They will score three, Koeman will bring a twelve year old for Farfan and that's all she wrote. In case AZ drops points, they still have a chance to provide the worst meltdown in Dutch Football with the fairytale ending Cocu deserves.

What to expect - Expect Cocu to publically ignore any and all 'tactical' plans by Koeman. Expect whoever is in charge in Eindhoven this week - seriously, they have like a new president every week! - to fire Koeman on the spot, making him the first Koeman to be fired this year, but certainly not the last.

Fifth Place, and the automatic UEFA Cup Goodness and ticket for the CL qualifiers playoff that goes with it.

I'll admit it, hardly anybody cares about this but me. Why? I'll show you.

5 Feyenoord 33 15 8 10 53 55 - 61
6 SC Heerenveen 33 15 7 11 52 55 - 42
7 Roda JC 33 14 9 10 51 40 - 36
8 FC Groningen 33 15 6 12 51 54 - 52

Feyenoord - Koeman decided to drop as many points in one season as he could without getting fired, and I must say, a job well done. Feyenoord plays Heerenveen away and needs a win to clinch the position. But Feyenoord hasn't won in a loooong time. A draw might also suffice, but only if Roda and Groningen don't win.

What to expect - Tears, and the first time in the history of football two brothers will be fired on the very same day.

Heerenveen - Also need a win, which would take them over opponents Feyenoord and into europe. They have two advanteges over Feyenoord. 1: they play at home. 2: they aren't a complete farce of a club.

What to expect - A goal by Brazilian striker Alves, at the very least.

Roda JC - Needs a draw between Feyenoord and Heerenveen and a win a bigger win at home against Heracles than a possible Groningen win against Utrecht. Roda's goal difference is better than Feyenoord's, so it would ensure them of fifth place. Hey it can happen! Heracles is done, safe, which means it hasn't anything more to play for and that could be why Roda will mess this up.

What to expect - No draw in the north and a win down south. A frustrated blogger.

Groningen - Can also by-pass Feyenoord and Heerenveen in case of that elusive draw in Heerenveen, but in case of a Roda win also needs to work on it's goal difference against Utrecht, which still has alot to play for.

What to expect - Everything that loves Groningen to curse the decision to insist on playing the final 43 minutes of their game against Ado, which was ended prematurely because of riots. Groningen hoped to work on the aforementioned goal difference in those final 43 minutes after having gone up 0-3 in the first 47 minutes, but instead conceded one goal and scored nill.

Anyways, that's it for me for now, I'm off to Tilburg to work at Willem II - Ajax. I'll weigh in tonight on some of the consequences todays games will have, so check back later! Unless Roda does actually make fifth place, in which case I will check in whenever my hangover wears off.

The Cat's Meow: The Last Yugoslavian Team (Janic, 2000)

2007-04-27T21:32:00.000Z

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 Cat’s Meow just proves show sharp and on top of things I really am. Nothing gets by me unnoticed. I’m like a cat.

A very lethargic, sloppy cat.

Today’s subject of the Cat’s Meow is a documentary that was released in 2000, and it’s called ‘The Last Yugoslavian Team’. It’s a Dutch production, made by Vuk Janic, who himself hails from Sarajevo. It details, as one might expect, the last generation of players from Yugoslavia, the so called ‘Chileans’, after their victory in the youth world cup in 1987 in Chile. And it manages to do so in a very beautifully paced, objective manner.

That last part is especially striking. Janic hails from Sarajevo, but does never judge or somehow favourably portray the players who are as well. Equal, if not more, screen time is given to players from other regions, and Janic solemnly collects their statements and presents the viewer with the possibility to construct their own viewpoint out of all these different stories about the same subject. The story shifts from the first matches between Croatia and Serbia, or Former Yugoslavia, footage material and interviews, and as such it has a very clear structure that fills you in on almost everything you need to know.

Janic incorporates all the known landmarks of the story. The Youth World Cup of 1987, the legendary footage of Boban attacking a policeman and the exclusion from the 1992 European Cup all feature, as they should. But he also provides you with a perspective of the inner workings of a team in this rare situation and the effect it has on both the players and their immediate surroundings. Boban, for one, became a staunch nationalist for the Croatian cause. Others, like Mijatovic, try to avoid the topic whenever possible.

Football is often given as an example of how a country can unite behind a single cause, like in Cote d’Ivoire during the last World Cup. It is seldom mentioned how it can also have the exact opposite effect, as becomes evident by the footage of an entire stadium of people booing their own national anthem.

Another very powerfull moment in the documentary which I think deserves special mention shows the Bosnian people, considered the last people who had faith in the union of the republics, after 'their' team advanced in the 1990 World Cup. Their cries of 'Yugoslavia! Yugoslavia!' resemble similar outburts of joy in other countries, but there is an almost desperate tone in their voice.

I would recommend this documentary to any and everyone with even the slightest interest in one of the most striking collisions between sports and politics. I have heard from some people it is rather hard to come by, so I do not have any problems providing you with a link where you can see it for free. Having said that, it really deserves better than being watched on Google Video.

The Last Yugoslavian Team - Janic, 2000.

Time Is Hardly Ever On Our Side

2007-04-27T11:00:00.000Z

We here in Holland tend to look down on the art of defending. We're no good at it, and as a result, we choose to haugtily belittle its importance. So, in today's post, I hope to provide you with something of a counterweight to that sentiment.

In the summer of 2004, advertisements on every corner of the Catalonian costal towns begged me to go to the Joan Gampar Trophy. I was not familiar with the trophy, but after inquiry I learned it was some sort of annual pre-season friendly, and this particular one was contested between FC Barcelona and AC Milan. As a child, I grew up absolutely adoring both these teams, and a chance to see them both at the same time nearly caused me to collapse.

I convinced my then-girlfriend to join me in the two hour line for tickets during the middle of a sweltering day. She deserves mention here, also because she might just read this and if I would omit her considerable plight from this account she will probably exact some sort of horrible revenge. She decided not to go, and I got two tickets on one of the lateral tribunas, for me and my father.

It was only my third trip to a Barcelona game in their own stadium. This would be nothing short of one of the most memorable football games I would ever attend, if only for how rare my presence in the Camp Nou was up to that point. What might have been a full game of soaking in every moment that comes with being a Barca fan in a sold out stadium during the introduction of new players such as Eto’o, an amazing experience in itself, very quickly turned into something even better: for a full forty-five minutes, I found myself the closest to the side of the field graced by Paolo Maldini and Allesandro Costacurto.

In a Camp Nou that was filled to the absolute brim, I breathlessly watched them move. In absolute sync. Without looking at each other, they knew exactly where on the field they were positioned. I could not be bothered with Barcelona’s exciting new signings or the home-grown stars I love so much. I don’t even remember the score. All I remember is Maldini and Costacurta, moving, perfectly, as one.

I have never met anyone or any thing more stubborn than time. It insists on moving forward, sometimes at a rapid pace, other times it creeps. Treacherous little bastard. I have seen many games where elimination depended on the whistle either to sound or to remain silent, and I have frantically prayed for both, but I have never wanted forty-five minutes to last as long as I did during the first half of that pre-season game. I could not bring myself to look at the time on the massive scoreboards, because I didn’t want to miss a second of men defending so effortlessly, with such purpose and grace.

Joep Smeets, En Un Momento Dado

2007-04-25T11:36:00.000Z

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.

Up in the Sky

2007-04-23T10:26:00.000Z

I’ve long wondered exactly what specific sight in football I hold dearest, and yesterday I was reminded of it once again. Sure, moments like the one Messi provided us with last week are breathtaking. They dominate my days, or at least my free time. But for sheer television drama, I’ll go with a moment only very rarely seen. You forget about it through the long, gruelling course of the season until in the final game, maybe the game before that, you can see it again.

Like most leagues, the Dutch league has a format in which all the games on the final one or two rounds of the season are played at exactly the right moment, barring some sort of excuse for a crowd like ADO den Haag’s, who found it necessary to ruin the final game ever to be played in their somewhat legendary stadium. But all the games of the 33rd round neatly kicked off simultaneously at the blow of a whistle, and other than the ADO game, they all ended at roughly the same time as well.

The situation at the top of the league here in Holland is close. PSV, in what must surely be one of the most spectacular meltdowns in human history, blew away what was once an eleven point lead to get both Ajax and AZ back into the race for the title. The former politely passed on a momentous opportunity to take the lead two weeks ago, the latter never had a chance to do so – until yesterday. And it was one of those moments I cherish so much.

AZ led SC Heerenveen two to one, when in the 85th minute, the stadium erupted. Now, stadiums tend to erupt, so nothing particularly strange there, but there had been no immediate cause for the mass celebration that took place here. A mere throw in was accompanied by the biggest explosion of joy in Alkmaar I have ever seen, and then I understood, what had happened. Some fifty kilometres to the south, Utrecht had equalized against PSV, putting AZ, if they would just beat Heerenveen, at the top of the table for the first time in the season. A minute later, with the AZ fans still in the midst of their most primal scream, Simon Cziommer scored with a beautiful long distance lob to put AZ up three to one, and the people on the stands had to gasp for air so they could scream some more.

In Amsterdam Ajax fans, up five to two, stopped paying attention to the game and started watching the massive scoreboards. That complete uncertainty about one’s own fate is one of the sights I enjoy the most about football. It’s the purest mixture of fear, hope and anticipation you’ll find. Me? As a Roda JC fan, I never have to worry about winning the title or not. But next week, I worry about fifth place and the automatic European ticket it provides. I hope Roda beats Heracles. I hope Heerenveen and Feyenoord tie. I hope Groningen doesn’t win its game by a bigger margin than Roda does. I fear one of these things will not happen. But in a production truck near the Willem II stadion, I’ll be watching the numbers, completely uncertain of my own (club’s) fate. And I will love it.

Vaya con Messi

2007-04-19T10:45:00.000Z

There is very little worse than still being half-drunk in the morning when you really thought you would have slept at least thatt off. Getting up, you immediately detect that void where, normally, your sense of balance would be. It also means that you are actually looking forward to your hangover, which, at a time like this, seems like something of a slight upgrade. But it never is.

A hangover is a nasty thing to beat. It persists, no matter the amount of water or juice you guzzle down. Time heals all wounds and all hangovers, but like with your average wound, a hangover drastically slows down your perception of time. It creeps forward, not about to let you get on with your life anytime soon.

But sometimes, something happens that shocks you right back into shape, or at least into something that resembles it. You have to function, and you won’t let a splitting headache and a set of sea legs stop you.

Last time around, that shock was something entirely unpleasant. But it appears I have timed this (ex-)hangover extremely well. It’s only a few feet from my bed to my desk, and I bravely made that leap when I realized it was a never a good idea to suntan in bed. The sun scorched me towards the desk, and I started checking the usual suspects. Football, other news, some blogs and finally my mail. I still haven’t gotten around to the last three items on that list.

And when you wake up with a hangover of your own, and, for whatever reason, check this blog out right away, my guess is neither will you. I don’t usually like to insert one of those youtube screens into my posts, I think it’s ugly, but an exceptional moment like this certainly merits it.

EDIT: It seems I am horribly technically impaired and cannot fit one of those screens in here. The good people at youtube prevent me from doing so, because they claim I don't know the correct username and password to acces this very blog. I'll leave all of you with a paltry link

Vaya con Messi - with special thanks to www.Lionelmessi.org

Another edit: the terrorists over at Audiovisual are claiming copyright on Messi's work of art left and right, and I can't seem to provide you with a video that is up long enough. Maybe THIS ONE, it didn't work for me but I think that may have been due to the traffic, I hope it works for you. If not, I hope you can find it for yourselves. It's worth the search, and that is the kind of insightful understatement of the century you'll only find at this blog.

Four Guys Walk Onto A Television Set...

2007-04-17T00:25:00.000Z

So four guys walk onto a television set. It's the start of a joke, but there is a crucial difference. There is no pun, only earnest. But there is a joke...

A man is very angry. He screams and yells. He cares, or at the very least he screams he does, at the top of his lungs. Another man agrees. A third one is silent. He is partly responsible for what it is that angers the other two men, so he remains, wisely, very quiet. The other man screams some more. They care, they care, they care, they scream. A fourth man, the final man, asks them again if they care. They do. He tells them it is so great to see them care so much, and they nod emphatically. They are proud of themselves for caring. Who else is going to, at a time like this? When Feyenoord plays such poor football?

The second man smiles. He likes the sound of that. Feyenoord plays such horrible football, and he can say it out loud right into the camera, as long as he does so in the name of compassion. It vindicates him. If he would say that Feyenoord plays poor football, he would be hung at the break of dawn, like in an old Western film. But if he says Feyenoord plays such horrible football and that it hurts him so much to see it, he gets away - no, better even. He repeats it, and waits to see how long he can wait with adding ‘and I care’. He looks around. He got away with, my god he did. This emboldens him greatly. He gets cocky and tries to push the boundaries a little: ‘ Feyenoord – Ajax should always be a top fixture, but if you look at it this year…Feyenoord losing at home and in Amsterdam…shameful’. He cannot believe it. Nobody else said a thing. There is the smile again. He did it. He finally said what he had always wanted to say, and got away with it.

The third man remains quiet, and absently tries to think of his results with Feyenoord against Ajax. They couldn’t have been very well. None of his other results were particularly good, and there is no reason to assume these would be any different. He looks at the other men. Maybe they remember? But they don’t care. Look at them foaming at the mouth about the sorry state Feyenoord is in. Not his Feyenoord, mind you. If any of them will ask him about his responsibility he has his answers ready. Budget, budget, budget, and that’s the end of it, but only partly because it is true. Mark Wotte is the other part of his two-part excuse. Also only partly true, but everyone dislikes Mark, so everyone has only very little hesitation to blame him. ‘Ruud?’ ‘Mark is such a pushover’, the third man thinks. ‘Ruud?’ He startles into action. ‘Not my fault, small budget, bad transfer policy.’ But isn’t he at least partly responsible for that? ‘No, no, no. Mark Wotte is.’ The four men agree.

The fourth man is starting to get desperate. He has been trying to guilt the third man into taking some sort of accountability in the whole affair, but he just sits there and answers ‘Mark Wotte’ to everything. The other two seem content screaming about a little, even if Frits has been gleefully crossing the line between objective journalism and sheer unbridled bias and Jan is slowly starting to show the first symptoms of anger-induced heart-failure. Ah, well. He turns solemnly to the camera and tells the little red light that ‘that is our show, people.’

It is, indeed.

1986 Or Later

2007-04-11T08:36:00.000Z

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.

Hola, Pendejos!

2007-04-07T16:49:00.000Z

Now, before any of you feel offended, our Mexican guests over the past week ensured me ‘pendejo’ can be used entirely in jest, and in this case it most certainly is. Except for one reader. You know who you are, cabrón. Change your iTunes password into something less revolting!

The past week has been nothing short of an incredibly incomplete and horrendously biased crash course to Mexican (and Spanish) football. The wonderful gifts from our guests, like the Chivas de Guadalajara flag, will receive a nice spot somewhere around the house (preferably: draped over the Ajax flag. That thing is an eyesore). Also, I will carry my recently obtained partial knowledge about Mexican football with me forever. Here is some of it, and I encourage anyone to fill in the blanks (or rather, the enormous hole) in the comments section.

Club Nexaca is, according to one of our guests, the ‘ugly son of Club America’. Not the little brother. The ugly son. He chose those words very carefully. This was, however, heavily – and passionately – refuted by another one of our guests. The latter encouraged me to search for the result of the Libertadores group game of his beloved Necaxa against Sao Paolo. My Spanish is severely lacking, but the headline on Mediotiempo was universal enough. They were no longer ‘perfect’, which to the both of us seemed somewhat of an understatement. The picture accompanying this headline was of a scoreboard that revealed the difference between perfect and imperfect can be as little as conceding three goals on foreign soil.

Clubs in Mexico can disappear. This happened to the club one of our other guests supported. They were relegated, and then disappeared. Upon being asked why exactly they had disappeared, no proper answer could be given. I was left with the impression of an organisation that just did not bother with such trifle things as showing up and competing anymore when they had dropped down a league. For no apparent reason.

Mexicans, like the Dutch, are not very apt at performing under pressure. This similarity meant that none of us, not my roommates or our guests, could clinch the many Pro Evolution games that ended in a draw after a 120 fictional minutes. Eventually, we collectively agreed we would no longer take penalties and settle for a draw. However, any occasions from the penalty spot that arose during the regular time were still missed with astonishing consistency.

There were many more things I discovered over the past week. How to make incredibly good guacamole, for example, and a variety of wonderful Spanish profanity. The difference between different types of Tequila. An especially beautiful Golazo is called a Golazazazo. Seventeen degrees and sunny is not to be considered good weather, and much, much more.

To Dara, Mariana, Rafael and Jeronimo, muchas gracias and I will hopefully see all of you again soon.

To Rafael and Jeronimo, you owe me a rematch, pendejos!

The Cat's Meow: Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait (Gordon, Parreno, 2006)

2007-04-05T14:21:00.000Z

Where is Franz?

2007-03-31T01:37:00.000Z

Today’s post is a bit of an irregularity for this blog, and I’ve thought not a little about whether or not I should even post it (I'm insufferable. I’ve read a total of two pages today that were not about football and already I have been swayed by language like ‘not a little’). But I have decided to go through with it.

This post is unlike my previous and future posts because it actually acknowledges you, the reader. I can now no longer pretend that my blog does not prove, to some extent, that I take myself entirely more serious than I should. By asking you this question I can now no longer pretend I think this blog is for anyone other than those directly around me, because I could have asked them the question personally. But if only one of you tries to answer my question, exposing to you the true extent of my megalomania will have been worth it.

What happened to Franz?

Some of you may know Franz better as Franz Beckenbauer (I can call him Franz because today I met someone who had met Franz earlier that day. Which means I know someone who knows, or has at the very least talked to der Kaiser. Der. Kaiser. People.). Informing about his whereabouts may at first seem somewhat peculiar, because Franz is all over the news. Franz is no longer just Franz, which was quite the feat in and of itself. Franz is football. Franz is politics. People like to be seen with Franz. Franz can call the German prime minister and ask her out for a cup of coffee and she’ll immediately leave nine out of ten official meetings with heads of state to oblige. So the question where Franz is right now, is not a difficult one to answer. Franz is everywhere.

Problem solved, one could say. But I’m afraid the question I ask you is not about that Franz. The question is about the elegant defender of the seventies, although calling him defender would be not nearly enough credit to him when it is certainly due. About the sweeper, who could sweep up anything that went past the defence in front of him and neatly convert it to the start of an attack in one smooth move. That kind of defender.

What happened to him? Why do we only seem him so very rarely anymore these days? The role has been played by people who’s capability to do so has been, and should have been, seriously contested by some. So the reason we don’t see many players striding gracefully to the front cannot be simply explained by a supposed quality detriment.

My answer to it is that those who have the qualities to play this role at one point collectively decided that it was even easier to just loiter up front and direct the play only in the most glamorous part of the field. From behind the striker, so they can both score goals themselves and take credit for setting up the poor bastard in front of him from time to time.

So coaches of this world, hear (or, read) this plea: next time you have yet another meaningless preseason friendly game, be it against a local amateur team or against a collection of stars from around the world, consider this. You have someone in your team who has that magnificent view down the field, yet all he sees is the last thirty meters of the field and the first fifteen rows of the stands behind the goal. Why does he need to see those stands? Wouldn’t you much rather have him play from somewhere where all that vision is put to much better use? This man is your best attacker, yet he only participates in the attack for the final twenty-five percent of the field. Read that line again. It’s madness. He has to be there from the very start!

And to all of you glamorous shadow strikers out there (I mean, even your position sounds by far the coolest out of all positions. Shadow Striker? That could very well be the title of some Japanese ninja film): Remember Franz escorted Heidi Klum onto the stage of the World Cup 2006 Draw. Which he managed to lure to Germany himself. The World Cup of course, not Heidi Klum. She is German. Franz won that same World Cup both as a player and as a coach, by the way. It would appear scoring a couple of less goals wouldn’t mean the end of the world, would it? After all, most highlight reels only end up on Youtube. Franz ends up everywhere.

So if any of you who read this feel you’re someone who might actually have an answer to this question, please feel free - by which I mean I will be forever disappointed with you if you don’t. Hey, if all else fails, guilt is always the way to go – to share them.

Post Art Deco

2007-03-29T09:31:00.000Z

It might just take a second. But it will happen. Amongst the organized chaos that is a training session of F.C. Barcelona, it will probably happen. Most will not even notice it. There are groups of players standing around everywhere, most of which garner more interesting stories than this one. Some of you will think of it as nothing more than two team mates greeting each other. But there is so much more to it than that. Deco will nod, and Giovanni van Bronckhorst will understand.

Deco will nod, because he is the arrived artist. The Portuguese Master. Some, myself included, believe there is only a very fine line between football and art, if any line at all. We believe there is more to football than just coincidence or luck. We believe that when Deco takes aim, he knows full well what will happen next. He is in complete control. He knows what work of art will follow. And like all art, it will mean great joy to many and deep horror to some.

On Wednesday the 28^th of April, it was not Deco, but Giovanni van Bronckhorst who took aim. Against Slovenia, wearing an orange jersey. He could not have seen his target; a wall of Slovenian defenders racing out towards him blocked his view. It didn’t matter. He knew it didn’t matter because an artist had once told him it didn’t. “Just shoot”, the artist had told Giovanni in Brazilian-Portuguese mangled Spanish. Last night, Giovanni did.

Every artist has his own speciality. Kandinsky had his diagonals and Picasso had his cubes. Deco’s art is the art of trajectory. Last night, Giovanni just shot, and trajectory took care of the rest. As to emphasize a point, Gio’s shot took not just one, but two deflections, the second even more significant than the first. This was no ordinary shot, this was a manifesto.

And it didn’t come a minute too soon.

- Art Deco
- Post Art Deco (Art Gio)

Collection on loan from the magnificent Footytube

On the Second Day of Disappointment, Our National Press Gave To Me...

2007-03-26T22:31:00.000Z

The three or four barren days between two international matches are slowly killing me. A constant stream of news that is not quite exciting enough to actually be news seeps into my mind. These days have an order of things, as rigid as concrete. A template set in stone.

The First Day After the Game is relatively silent. It is a Sunday. Most Dutch newspapers don’t publish a Sunday edition, so their writers have to wait a day to spew their gall. Public discontent, at this point, expresses itself largely through a state of numbness. We are surprised. We had hoped against hope that this game would be different, and sat through it waiting for a moment where everything comes together perfectly. We know it would never come, so we decided to settle for a goal. Any goal. Only a win would justify our willingness to subject ourselves to ninety minutes of this. The rest of the First Day After the Game is carefully spent choosing to who you will and to who you will not admit you actually watched it.

The Second Day After the Game is one of severe public turmoil. Having been held on a tight leash for the entire Sunday, our nation’s rabid sportswriters are set loose, and the result isn’t pretty. We read reports of players who have been sent home, and others who are time-bombs waiting to go off. I scour a hospital newspaper stand for anything that will satisfy my need for blood. AD Sportwereld, the one Dutch attempt at a daily sports newspaper, will do. At night, a man on the television screams about the coach, the tactics and the team. Then he nuances his words a little. Then some more. Then some more until he’s apologizing.

The Last Day Before the Next Game will be one filled with caution. The insurgent voices within the Dutch media will have run out of steam. They’ll sound hoarse, careful and hesitant. On this day, those who have been especially vocal realize what they have done. An opportunity at which they can be proven wrong approaches rapidly. How could they not have seen this coming? They are nervous. What if they were wrong? What if the team will put on a show to end, once and for all, every doubt about their coach?

On the Day Of the Next Game, we wait again. As reports about the line-up slowly make it to the public, we take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves: “Is this going to be any better than the last time? Is this really worth all of our time and frustration? Am I really going to watch this again?”

The answers? Let us hope so, probably not and yes I will.

Today is about Nothing but Tonight

2007-03-24T13:16:00.000Z

Today is not a regular day. Today does not happen very often. Today I slept in. That does happen very often. But the rest of today does not. The rest of today I spent waiting. Today has ruined my schedule beyond belief. My schedule of consciously ignoring the fourth-annual academic moment of truth, which approaches rapidly. My schedule of worrying about that job I really want that I may or may not get. My schedule of worrying about that man who will be physically opening my knee in two days to see what is wrong. Today I ignore all the panic that comes with realizing I am considerably behind on all of these schedules.

Today I will walk to the store down the road, like on most other days. I don’t stock up. I never do. So I have to make the trip, because even though today is special, it is not an exception in my daily needs – food, water, chocolate. So the trip has to be made. But it will seem inconsequential. More so than usual. I will make the trip and realize I care less about actually making it than on any other day. This trip is not what I will remember of today. It will pale in comparison.

Today I wait. I wait for friends to trickle into my house. For roommates to return. Just in time. I wait for those close calls. Will they make it? Will they be here in time? They probably will. They will not miss a second. Their trips here will be as necessary as my trip to the store. They have to be here. They refuse to miss a second

Today I received a call. Just now, but I cannot remember about what exactly it was. If anything today is about anything other than today, I will not care. It will not be as important. Like my trip, the call, too, just paled in comparison.

Today is so much more than just another day on the Gregorian calendar. Today is a day on the FIFA calendar. Today my country plays and I will watch, scream and sigh, but maybe not in that order. Today I have to stop writing, because today is not about writing. Today is about nothing but tonight.

Smite The Romanian Heathens

2007-03-23T15:48:00.000Z

To modern man, our ancestors’ behaviour can be quite puzzling at times. Sure, we understand why one would have a sea whipped if it would be disobedient. We can even imagine the need for crossing a mountain on the back of an elephant. But armed with 20/20 hindsight and a set of archaeological tweezers, nothing confuses us more than our predecessor’s relationship with their respective deities.

From being struck with lightning for doing a stand-up impression of a certain Greek King of Gods, to being nibbled on by an Egyptian underworld god for not having the correct weight of heart, much like the virgin Mary, pre-modern man took it all lying down. Exactly why some gods felt it was necessary to change people into forests at random, nobody knew. Because nobody asked, as odds were pretty good you’d be turned into shrubbery yourself.

Marco van Basten, for all intents and purposes a bit of a deity to a lot of neurotic oranges, fortunately cannot turn people into foliage. He would have quite the time on his hands if he could. Because unlike a few thousand years ago, when people knew better than to question their lord after a load of frogs came raining down, the otherwise extremely disloyal Dutch subjects are now carefully raising their hands and apologetically want to know the answer to one of the major religious questions of our time:

Why field Denny Landzaat?

As I prepare myself for another 90 minutes of resignation to our saviour’s unwillingness to play anybody else than the Wigan midfielder (known for his occasional powerful shots from distance and bland sideways passing), my mood dampens at the prospect of yet another game hopefully won by two, maybe three moments of brilliance somewhere in the 63^rd, 71^st and 79^th minute. Three moments that generally come completely out of nowhere and are in no way or form the result of the run of play. Those moments are all we've got, and their sporadic nature is enough to bring any person to the brink of disinterest.

Sure, it’s three points. It’s a win. Over a rival, even. I’m spoiled. I should be glad the team even wins. Do I know how many countries there are who don’t win as often? The team is young. We’re top of the group. Our God is a just God. Do we understand?

We don’t. Excellent. We’re not supposed to, now are we?

The Cat’s Meow: Once In A Lifetime, the Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos. (Crowder, Dower, 2006)

2007-03-21T10:53:00.000Z

Right. I hope this will eventually turn into a running feature. 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.

Once in a Lifetime details the story of the Cosmos from its humble beginnings in the late sixties towards its eventual glitter and glamour induced demise in the mid-eighties. This in itself makes the film an interesting document for those of you to whom this period in North American Soccer (uhm…sic.), remains a bit of a mystery.

The film focuses largely on the efforts of media tycoon Steve Ross and his efforts to establish football as a legitimate sport in the United States. Realizing this would take quite the spectacle to do so, Ross embarked on a mission to bring in one of the most spectacular player of all time; the recently retired Pelé.

From there on out, Once in a Lifetime is, above anything else, a detailed account of a power struggle within the New York Cosmos. All the main players, except for Pelé, have their say over who or what eventually killed of the Cosmos. Some say it was de facto president/forward Giorgio Chinaglia, others say it was the weight of the NASL collapsing on itself. The emphasis on this particular part of the organisation of the Cosmos draws attention away from the broader rise to popularity of football in the United States during this period.

One particularly interesting story is about the arrival of Brazilian legend Carlos Alberto, which coincided with the New York Blackout. “As light came back over New York City, the Cosmos where everywhere”, Matt Dillon narrates. There are obvious reasons for this explosion of interest – Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto to name two – but the exact cause of this apparent overnight boom of infatuation with football is never truly explained.

However, even while sporting an at times annoying Seventies aesthetic – yes, we get it: seventies music and those cheesy colourful titles - this documentary does successfully convey what the Cosmos have actually meant for football in the United States. Not only at the time they dominated both the league and fan attention, but also in the long run. So while it misses out on giving a more complete impression of the state of U.S. football at the time, it does shows the roots of modern United States football. It may provide more questions than it answers, but at the very least it’s one of the more interesting and crucial pieces of the puzzle.

It's Even Worse When the Commentator Starts Snickering In Pity

2007-03-20T23:58:00.000Z

There is a feeling of discomfort that comes over me from time to time. It’s a cruel mixture of unjustified pride or justified shame and powerless acceptance. It’s what I imagine a mother bird feels when one of her young strides towards the edge of the nest and makes the leap.

I don’t consider myself for one second to be an authority on football. Others occasionally do, which scares me enormously. At times like that I am forced to acknowledge that my the insight others think I might have is not caused by a record of dead-on predictions, but rather by an apparently public knowledge of just how dominant a part of my life football is. I say apparently public, because I try feverishly to hide this. Then my friends started quizzing me in the presence of their friends to convince them that they know this circus freak, this oracle of football. And while it turned out I did not know where Stormvogels Telstar, a modest Dutch second division team, hails from, it became apparent to me that:

A) Nobody knows exactly where Stormvogels Telstar hails from
and
B) I fail miserably when trying to play off how important football is to me.

A (great) Dutch comedian once said Jesus could have been off much, much worse. His crucifix could have been erected next to someone’s who can only talk about football at parties, or next to a Limburger. I am the latter. There is very little I can do about that. But I have made such an effort to avoid being the former. I try to bring up politics, arts, study, travel, anything. It’s exhausting.

But even when people wrongfully assume my views on anything hold more weight than theirs do, I try biblically to make as few predictions as possible. Predicting scores is right out, as is predicting league positions. There are, however, some unfortunate moments. I let my guard down for just a second, and an entire room of friends has clearly heard me proclaim that this or that player will be very good at some point in time.

However, like the baby bird, who, still half blind, has made it’s way towards the outermost point of it’s shelter, a prediction like this can go two ways.

At the very best, I feel moderately proud, which is far too small an upside. It’s difficult pretending you ‘called’ a player when in fact he’s already made it to at least the higher youth ranks of a professional club. In fact, there is little sense in thinking you’re alone (and – even more preposterous – first) in your hopes for a player. If you were, that player would obviously not be where he is when you first see him dart up and down a wing. But it is still nice to see a player you had high hopes for makes it into the public football conscience as a good player.

However, it can also backfire tremendously. Like the little bird’s hope for flight, which vanishes as rapidly as he plunges to the ground and his untimely demise, any credibility my friends may have attributed to me, in what can now only be regarded as a serious lapse in judgement, will disappear. It will bring about games of silent embarrassment. I will spent entire games hoping some fuck up won’t fuck up, but of course they always do. Gleeful looks will be gleefully cast over shoulders in my general direction, whenever yet another woeful pass is given. I was wrong.

Splat...

Everytime I Think I'm Out, They Pull Me Back In

2007-03-17T14:20:00.000Z

Kaalheide is just one of the many names on the list of football stadiums that have been deemed obsolete in recent years. Considering the fact that over the past decade many stadiums in the Netherlands have been rebuilt in such a fashion, they now warrant millennium proof names such as Gelredome and ArenA (note the second capital, as Arena itself is obviously not a particularly new name), it seemed the only logical decision Roda JC could make. Downsides? None, whatsoever. A bigger budget to structurally compete with the top clubs. A proper stadium would be needed if the club was to play on a European level every year, as it had done in the past few.

Kaalheide was many things, but a proper stadium, in the eyes of the men in charge at the time, it was not. And indeed it does not say much for a stadium when someone who has been there as often as I, cannot immediately identify on the television whether his club is playing the first leg against a Ukranian opponent at home or away. The similarities between the stadiums in Donetsk and Kerkrade were enough for even me to realize that perhaps, indeed the time had come to make the move.

Others may have followed the placement of any brink on another with their complete and undivided attention, but I hadn’t. Football was, at the age of fifteen, not what was dominantly on my mind. Subscription to the football magazines had long been cancelled. Visits to my grandparents, which I had always loved as they had meant a visit to Roda, were to be avoided at all costs. My developing need for independence meant having to prove I could handle my money myself, which of course I could not. Going to the games by myself was therefore not an option. The ticket I could have managed, but the train would have been a different story. And even if I could have paid for the two hour train trip (one way), I very much doubt my parents would have even let me go on my own. But all the financial problems in the world didn’t matter, because I simply didn’t want to go anymore. And then, in the midst of this growing disinterest, I made up my mind and quit playing myself.

My father looked at me incredulously. He had heard me mention it before, but had always managed to, for whatever reason, make me reconsider. But he must have seen it coming. There were numerous reasons, and I knew he couldn’t shoot down all of them.

- “No time to work on Saturdays”.
More allowance.

- “More time for school.”
“Since when do you care about school?”

Touché.

- “Bad knee.”
Silence.

And that was it. As much as he would have liked me to keep on playing, he was not about to try to convince me my knee was fine.

- “Are you sure?”

I was. Neither of us harbored dreams for any sort of a football career, so that could not have been the cause of his disappointment. I think he genuinely felt bad for me. He had seen how much I enjoyed it. But there were so many good reasons to quit playing, only one of which is given above. The other reasons, both to my father then and to you right now, are not entirely relevant. So I quit, slept in on the first Saturday morning I was off and desperately tried to be done with football altogether.

All of this, though, would most likely not have mattered had I lived in the actual vicinity of the construction site. It would have awed me, much like it swept away the management in a binge of unbridled optimism. But I did not live near the new stadium. In fact, I have never lived anywhere closer than 130 kilometers away from the club. In a densely populated country as the Netherlands, that means I lived closer to virtually every other club in the Dutch league, with the exception of the northern teams but including all of the traditional Dutch top clubs. Those 130 kilometers also meant I thought I could ignore the club and everything around it if I wanted to. And I really, really wanted to.

Later I found out that the physical distance I was removed from where my club played did not matter at all, as both the distance between us and my emotional attachment to and involvement with Roda increased sharply. But I did not see that coming when I was fifteen. I honestly hoped I did not care anymore, and that I would not care again. So Roda JC advanced to the final of the Dutch Cup. And I, once again, stood in the stands with my eyes closed for the full 90 minutes.

Keep Your Eyes on the Road, Your Hands upon the Wheel

2007-03-16T00:07:00.000Z

I don’t remember exactly what year it happened. But there was a time when the Fruitella-filled trip in the backseat of my parents’ car to where I was actually going was one of the highlights of the entire vacation. Fights with my sister over pillows, nagging my parents over what music should be played, running around the sunny French or German stops along the route. All of it seemed even better than the two-week stay at some Austrian or French campsite itself. And all of it was always accompanied by the same old tune.

’We zijn er bijna, we zijn er bijna, maar nog niet helemaal’

Which translates to

’We’re almost there, almost there, but not quite yet’

But when I grew up, I didn’t feel like singing it anymore. I wanted to get out of the car as fast as possible. I wanted to be there already and swim. The fact that I was almost there but not quite yet didn’t seem like cause for celebration and singing anymore.

Two years ago, both PSV and AZ crashed out of their respective European competitions in the most dramatic fashion possible. They had been almost there, but not quite yet.

Everyone grows up eventually. PSV and AZ have stopped singing.

Magpies Crash Out in Holland [Skysports]
Gunners Bow Out in Alex Show [Skysports]

Christiane Amanpour Has Got Nothing On Me

2007-03-14T00:32:00.000Z

If I saw Christiane Amanpour turn around a corner somewhere, I’d dive head-first into the nearest Kebab Shop in search of refuge of whatever doom it is that would follow shortly. But tonight, even though Christiane is probably out there dodging killer African turtles somewhere, she has got slightly less on me than she would have on any other night.

As I type this, walls are crumbling everywhere around me. Flocks of young men are roaming the streets in search of their next victim. Hide your mailboxes, garden gnomes and, if you have any, your children. None of them are save for the ferocious onslaught that follows a night of riots with a massive arrest count of two.

I might have been overreacting a bit when I said the walls were crumbling around me. To my knowledge, nothing has actually crumbled as of yet. At least not at the site the actual riots took place yesterday, which is half a kilometre away from me. It is now ‘hermetically sealed off’ from the outside world. The fences seem to have a Siren-like effect on large groups of youthful riot tourists, who come swarming towards them practically begging for an arrest. I am not one of them. In spite of their ridiculous proximity (calls from concerned relatives are coming in) and my growing curiosity, I have managed to miss every single sight of anarchist behaviour.

What always puzzled me about civilian unrest, and what I now get to experience semi-first hand is its ability to be unavoidably present (unless, apparently, you just don’t leave your house for an entire day) at one moment, completely vanish over night, only to resurge the following evening. Where are these people during the day? Do they work? Do they prepare ritually for battle during their paper rounds? Who are these rebels of the night? But most importantly: why do they insist on throwing rocks when they know they are just going to get a canister of teargas in reply. It seems pretty obvious who’s getting the short end of that deal.

When Feyenoord last won a championship in 1999, riots erupted that made the centre of Rotterdam look somewhat like a Balkan war zone. While this would (should?) not make immediate sense to most of us, a Feyenoord fan later explained to me that this had been because of the fans’ inability to fully grasp what was going on; success. Out of sheer confusion, they started tearing down their own city. After so many years of supporting their hilariously unsuccessful team, violently expressing their frustration, even in victory, had become their only way to respond.

I wish you all good night, as I prepare to sleep right on through another night of civil disobedience.

Sleep well, Christiane Amanpour. We are the same, you and I.

Cruel Irony, Orange is thy name. And, incidentally, thy Citrus Fruit of Choice. Fancy that.

2007-03-12T20:58:00.000Z

It is one thing being Dutch. It is quite another being Dutch and having an attention span of less than five seconds when it comes to anything but football. And some other sports. Maybe... This would be a far less agonizing state of affairs in, say, Finland. The Finnish, I imagine, have by this point not given up every hope of a better future in football. Why would they? They have hardly achieved anything when not hurling themselves down a slope on skis, so the best, for them, could very well be still to come.

This does not, however, hold entirely true for the Dutch. At this point, I’m trying frantically to think of anyone/thing who/which experienced such an amazing tumble from grace and – and this is the important part - eventually got back up again. Icarus certainly didn’t, nor did the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Eighties or Nottingham Forrest. They are currently a dead Greek, either Austria or Hungary, the decade style forgot and a third or forth league (and rate) English side, respectively.

The irony, then, is that nobody seems really willing to give up on the Dutch like they have given up on glitter hair and dual monarchies just yet. And they claim not to for good reason. Because of the Dutch insistence on showing promise and failing to deliver upon that very same promise, our current irrelevancy is seen by some as, if anything, nothing more than a temporary lapse in greatness. It is seen not so much as a fall from a pedestal as it is seen as a slight wobble of that pedestal. Dutch football, some may think, has experienced one of those moments where you sleep but dream you fall. It’s a polite step down from grace, if anything.

But what if it isn’t? Everybody from Kiki Musampa to Rafael van der Vaart has been dubbed the new saviour of the national team, and none of them have up to this point. I wonder what it takes for an analyst to get up in the morning, shower, go to work and proclaim on television that whatever Dutch talent of the year is ‘the New Cruijff’. Aside from Brazil and Argentina, is there any other country in which one particular player is continually used as a measuring stick for any eighteen year old talent who cannot possibly live up to these expectations? France will suffer the same fate in the near future, when every young player will face the harsh and unfair comparison to Zidane. But Italy? Germany? England? Spain? All of them had greats in the past, but I’ve never heard anyone proclaiming Aaron Lennon to be the next George Best (Northern Irish, I know). Now some of you who may be better acquainted with the English game than I am will tell me that that is the case because in no way, Aaron Lennon is actually going to be the next George Best. I know this. But there’s no way either in which Hedwiges Maduro of Ajax is going to be the next Beckenbauer (we Dutch don’t feel the next Beckenbauer necessarily needs to be German), and yet that is a comparison often heard during the summer of 2005.

Fact is, there will, most likely, never be a new Cruijff. Lightning tends not to strike twice. So let’s keep our expectations low, be realistic and let us all hail the new Bergkamp. Because if it weren’t for Robin van Persie, I could very well see the Dutch National team go the way of Sissi, Pacman and that rather high-and-mighty looking Greek fellow.

Et Tu, Diminutive Four-Eyed Brunette Whose Name After All These Years Still Escapes Me? Et Tu?

2007-03-12T16:18:00.000Z

During this period of the year, in which my team (which I shall introduce to you in a post in the near future, I hope) usually lays the foundation for another unsuccessful season-finale, I find myself on the wrong side of a Psychology 101 book. In front of it, pretending to study, whilst actually checking the scores of whatever obscure football league I haven’t checked the scores of yet. All this in an attempt to do anything else but read how the author of the book barges through open doors – and subsequently deny he did - as if his life depended on it. So I made the mistake everyone makes when they just can’t plow through their mandatory material; I started attending the actual lectures.

This particular psychology crash course for people who care as much about psychology as psychology students would care about a class on Weimar film (little, if any whatsoever) was an in-depth explanation of the psyche’s inner workings when stereotyping. I’m surprised I even went, but I had a car, and there’s nothing like driving to campus passing busses full of oxygen deprived students and cyclists that are beginning to show the first symptoms of hypothermia. Even if it does mean you get in fifteen minutes late.

- “Lazy students”, I heard someone yell out as I entered.

- “Speak of the devil”.

Laughter.

As I settled down and took out the note book, which would be exclusively used for battling my neighbor in a thrilling series of tic-tac-toe (start in the bottom left, hope he is too confused to put one in the center, and finish him off. Look smug and victorious), I realized that the example of the lazy student had been an addition to a list that continued to grow as suggestions arose from the crowd. I knew it was going to come. It always does.

- “Moroccans!”

Wait for it.

- “Ex-convicts!”

Wait for it.

It took longer than it usually does. But when it came, which of course it did, it was met by a noise of almost universal agreement. The diminutive four-eyed brunette who had suggested it had even managed enough courage, probably for the first time in her life, to stand up and distinguish herself from those around her. This Spartacus-like gesture, intended to drive her point even further home, hadn’t been necessary. The buzz created by this sense of patting one another on the back in an understanding of common superiority was accompanied by the smuggest of smiles on the face of the forty year old lecturer. I knew it. It only made an appearance when he was utterly delighted with either himself or one of his students. Although most of the time he only humored himself enough to justify this specific smile, this was a case of the latter. On the blackboard behind him, “Football fans” was about to join “Moroccans” and “Students” as groups against which considerable stereotyping took place. However, unlike in the case of both “Moroccans” and “Students”, it was not deemed necessary to mention the fact that stereotypes are not an inherently negative phenomenon. Sure, there are also plenty of well behaving Moroccans and industrious students. But football fans? Violent dim-wits, the bunch of them. No further explanation necessary.

As might not be completely evident by the fact that I came in rather late, and also by the fact that I did not bother to stay during or after the interval, I did not particularly care for this course. But as I left the room only twenty minutes after I had entered, I was drawn towards the blackboard. “People with accents”. Well, yes, that would be me (I recently discovered it was far more noticeable than I had previously thought). Probably suggested by that redhead girl in the back with the retarded-sounding Twents accent. “Foreigners”. No. “Students”, “Youths”, “Drug-users” (user sounds so much graver than it should, don’t you think?). All groups I either am or could consider myself to be a part off. I have never been to prison, nor am I Moroccan, so those two were out. But all of the others were comfortable fits, too, and they didn’t offend me at all.

So why the sudden queasy feeling? After a few years of university, I know exactly two people by name. That means if there had been a hundred people in the room, I would not have cared for 97 of those. And while this may also prove that I have, quite possibly, the poorest social skills of anyone in that room, it also proves it does not generally matter to me what people think. So why, if one of these people felt the need to look down on football fans, even though she will be dressed up completely in orange when the next European Cup comes around, would I possibly feel offended? It had never mattered what anyone I did not care about had thought of me. But I did not even know, let alone cared about, the girl who had reaped such general approval while twisting the social dagger that is stuck in my side. But it had hurt like hell. Again.

Later that night I forced myself not to watch German Cup Football. In order to convey the exact magnitude of that sacrifice, in posts to follow, I shall provide you with an insight to whatever matters to me in the world of football (and you’ll hopefully conclude missing a German Cup game between a first division team and a third division team isn’t actually that much of a deal to me, but turning it off still felt like a great step in the direction of complete social rehabilitation – which writing this blog has already negated).

An early Demise of Aspiration

2007-03-11T02:36:00.000Z

This is the first post of this blog. Announcing this to you means the premature demise of the hopes I actually cherished for it. These hopes were, in no order of importance:

Anonimity

Credibility

Objectivety

Some sort of favourable reputation

Out the window, just like that. Let's have a look at the reasons why these hopes were shattered, shall we?

Anonimity - by me taking it upon myself to announce to you that this is the very first post of this blog, I have already let you in on who I am too much to truly remain anonymous. I have, by announcing this post, already made you realize I am someone who thinks what he thinks matters to others. Seeing as how you already know I am that kind of a person, I might as well fill in the gaps and tell you some more about who I am.

I am Joep Smeets. I like many things in life, but I enjoy precious little of it as much as football. Considering my possibly unfounded belief in and high opinion of my ability to express my love of it, this means I intend to bother you about football through great lengths. This may lead you to believe I am some obnoxious git with a rather misplaced arrogance, but I hope you'll believe me when I say I am not. I have, in fact, already told you with the title of this blog that I am a very neurotic person. Example: I fear my ever-increasing use of the word 'have' without any actual knowledge of English grammar. Neurotic Orange, then, refers to a person of neurotic nature with a Dutch passport. Both apply to me. Of course, a blog by someone so deluded by his sense of self-importance could only be named after its author. So bring on the self-consciousness. This is all you need to know about me right now. I'll bother you with some other personal traits later on.

Credibility - I can be very clear on this: I have none. I have no credentials whatsoever when it comes to writing about football. No more than you, in any case, and quite possibly less. So if you read any of this and think "Who the hell does he think he is?", I can tell you right now I won't have a good answer to that question.

Objectivity - Like every opinion ever expressed by a football fan, some horribly crude and others heavenly articulated, my opinions are deeply drenched in bias. I have no problem admitting this, as you would have probably found this out yourselves rather quickly anyways.

Some sort of favourable reputation - Ok, I'll admit it: I still have a slight (again, possibly misplaced) hope for this one. Therefor(e?) I shall go on with this blog. The style isn't really yet what I hope it will be in time, but I'll get to that when I have the time. Meaning I will let somebody else handle it.

As a sign of goodwill, I'll tell you a little about what this blog is going to be like. It doesn't matter that some of you may know me personally, I'll be as honest - and personal - as I'll possibly dare. So if you don't feel like knowing me any better than you already do, I understand. Don't read this. If you do feel you want to see this side of a person like me, and hopefully of more people like me, please do read this, and do comment on it. It is going to be a place where anyone can write freely about football and their love for it. If you've got something related you feel like sharing but are too lazy to start a blog, send it in. If I think it is any good, I'll gladly post some background on you and your story.

I'll leave this here now and come back to it tomorrow. If I haven't suffered complete embarrassment because of all the above by then, I'll consider posting some more about me and this blog. So please join me, as I slowly track down and brutally kill any of my last remaining aspirations for this blog post by post.