With video
Edge of sixteen, a hard shot and a ball that seems to fly stiffly into the intersection. What follows is an unlikely save from an aging goalkeeper. The almost 82-year-old Kees van Dongen from Sommelsdijk proves that you never forget goalkeeping and conquers the internet with a feline gliding dive.
The video captured with a mobile phone is now starting to take off on social media. The images are spectacular. During an anniversary match in honor of the 80th anniversary of the South Holland amateur club Melissant, a player plays a devastating blow. The ball is almost certainly on its way to disappearing into the ropes, until the fist of 81-year-old Van Dongen suddenly appears. He hits the ball high.
Kees van Dongen is a football icon at Goeree-Overflakkee, who will celebrate his 82nd birthday next month. Yet his reflex down the line surprised friend and foe.
The nestor himself remains sober about it. “I received a lot of reactions to that video on Facebook,” he says, laughing. “All enthusiastic, but often also full of surprise. Many people thought it was great to see me jump again. But I always look carefully at the person who is shooting at me. This shooter had his foot fully behind the ball, so I knew it would go up. Jumping was my only chance. I did that and that way I could change his direction. Ha, that was quite fun, man.”
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It is no coincidence that Van Dongen plucks the ball out of the air so effortlessly. He played goalkeeper at a high amateur level for forty years, but also had a taste of real big-time work. The seed of that professional adventure? A vacancy in this newspaper.
“I was 22 years old,” Van Dongen looks back on the year 1967. “I responded to an advertisement from DOS – the predecessor of FC Utrecht – in the Algemeen Dagblad. The club was looking for goalkeepers. I was allowed to attend trial training and was actually offered a contract. I didn’t play much in the first team, but I was the first Goeree-Overflakkee goalkeeper to play professional football. After two years in Utrecht, I returned to the amateurs.”
Still a fanatic
Once he stopped as an active player, he grew into a valued goalkeeper coach in the region. It was only at the age of 71, when his body began to protest, that he said goodbye with a heavy heart. Van Dongen is passionate about everything he does.
He still doesn’t sit still – more than ten years after his last training. To stay fit, the sturdy eighty-year-old is on the tennis court twice a week. So when VV Melissant asked him if he wanted to put on the gloves one more time for the anniversary match with the 1995 champions, he didn’t have to think for a second. With a viral gliding dive as a beautiful end result.
