The panic football club Vitesse called this week after two pitiful drying matches in the Eredivisie with the trainer of Manchester United. Whether Erik wanted to become a trainer in Arnhem after next weekend?
I think this is a good topic to discuss long, broadly and especially deeply in one of the twenty weekly football programs that our country now has. Do we have enough football experts for all that bullshit? Everyone in that world is an expert. If you have ever lowered the corner flags at Helmond Sport for half a year, you can easily take a seat at one of those tables on Dutch television. Nice chat with Arno Vermeulen and a keeper of the long bankrupt Wageningen, who is not recognized by anyone. All sponsored by greedy gambling farmers. The former coffee lady of the professional club Veendam, which was dissolved in 2013, will soon join the conversation about Ziyech’s seats at Chelsea and the important position of Maurits Hendriks at Ajax. Olympic Maupie is going to bring some more humor to the Amsterdam club. The Arena will shake bellies.
The number of football programs shows the state of the country well. Did I read that Wesley Sneijder complained in one of these chat boxes about the shameful birthday card that the KNVB had recently sent him on his 37th birthday? They congratulated him on his 47th birthday on that card. Shame on Wes. Shame? I think he can squeeze his fat fists. In the last picture I saw of him, I estimated him to be 57. Because I was in a good mood.
Silly country. Not just about football. Last Wednesday morning I had a great time with a stale tits-tut discussion on our national news channel Radio 1. What was going on? The lady’s magazine Linda. wanted to unprune the Netherlands and therefore had a number of women with their naked boobs on the cover. Naked Hooters is an exaggeration in this case. The ladies had all very well crossed their arms in front of their breasts, so that you only saw bare arms. This made it more like the club magazine of Kees van der Staaij’s black stocking church. The editor-in-chief of the Linda defended the far too safe picture by stating that if they had shown everything, the photos would then be taken from the deeply religious Instagram and the heavily Islamic Facebook. And then no newspaper would be sold. Well, we are Dutch, so money is more important than principles. So far I could still follow it.
But then luckily the woke chatter started! There were complaints! The photo was not inclusive enough. The tits were too beautiful and too white and all had the right cup and the perfect age. What was the objection? There was no big fat grandma among them. Furthermore, there were no sad tea bag types, no healthy silicone boys and an amputee breast cancer patient was also sorely missed. Why did I enjoy myself? Because the weather was so heartbreakingly touching. One of those Goois protests that shouldn’t cost any money, followed by that contemporary posturing. A cozy black tit discussion on the main news channel in the country that is almost completely ablaze by the refugee crisis, the nitrogen pollution, the housing shortage, the inflation specter and the massively depressed young people.
And of course there are more problems: who will soon be taking care of the homeless Sywert van Lienden, Camille van Gestel and Bernd Damme? Where do we put this sad trio? A hotel near idyllic Tubbergen? A shelter in Ter Apel? Or just in a prison between some criminal colleagues? It was wonderful to learn that they had simply stored some of their stealing work in Switzerland and Luxembourg. Then you belong to the better villainous types. Wopke may have passed on a PO box in the Virgin Islands back then. He knows the route.
Should we talk about Wopke? The frightened hare who tries to save his panic game and now crawls towards the angry farmers with nodding knees. Isn’t it sweet? This piece started with panic football, so let’s end with it.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 20, 2022