Post Art Deco

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...

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

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

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?

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

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.