Football club SV Tongelre from Eindhoven needs a third field. That just won’t come. The football players have been waiting for it for 13 years. There is, however, a grandstand overlooking a mud puddle with weeds and shrubbery. “It’s absurd,” Secretary Robert Rikken says.
The football club rents the complex from the municipality. He recently decided that a new parking lot could be built. But why then does it not want to go smoothly with the field? Secretary Rikken explains that the housing crisis in 2009 caused the plan to be canceled. A new neighborhood was also not completed. Two fields would be enough for the club. “That was true then, but now we are growing. It will be more difficult to get the teams classified.”
The district is now there and construction is still underway around the sports complex. The number of new, young members is growing enormously. In 2017, the club still had 270 members. There are now 460.
It starts to pinch, but a third field is not forthcoming. The municipality first forgiven the club a debt of 130,000 euros with the agreement that a third field will only be built in 2024. The club must first pay another debt of 15,000 euros. ”If it continues to grow, we will have to introduce a membership freeze. That is difficult: we have to grow from the municipality, but this contradicts that. We hope the field will be there as soon as possible.”
Alderman Stijn Steenbakkers of sports proudly started his new job in 2018, but he was a bit concerned about the grandstand. “When I started, I was the only alderman with a grandstand without a field.” He believes that a good solution has now been found by canceling most of the debt first. “I am happy that after thirteen years there is a solution”.
Isn’t it a waste of tax money that the grandstand has not been used? “The stand has had no function for thirteen years, but we will put it down for forty to fifty years. Then it will be useful for 37 years and we are especially very happy with that.”
Henk Krol, then still of the Elderly Appeal, was already afraid in 2014 that this would become the laughingstock of the Netherlands. He said: “It’s unbelievable. It’s like the grandstand was built the other way around because there are two fields at the back that are in use. It seems like a joke, but we take this very seriously.” The construction of the sports complex would have cost the municipality millions, he said at the time.
Tourists now even come to take a look at the stadium. “They say: We were in Eindhoven. We have to see that sports park of yours, because a grandstand that has been in the wrong position for thirteen years is something special. They really come here especially for that. We get so many spectators, but we would have preferred other publicity.”