Four Guys Walk Onto A Television Set...

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.

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

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?

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

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...

An early Demise of Aspiration

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.