An increasingly recurring question: “Why are you behind Michel Schaay?” Michel Schaay is the figurehead of the group of Arnhem entrepreneurs who wants to save the Vitesse football club under the name ‘De Sterkhouders’. The answer is simple: Schaay was the first – and so far only – that goes for the minimum chance that ‘it’ may still exist. Until the hole. While other prominent figures were busy pointing towards each other, he got up. He could also have chosen to sail with his boat, but, because no one else did it, was against will and thanks. Leader of a Legion. Our lives differ in everything, there are also some stains on his sweater in this process, but I have often met him enough to feel the intention. He does not do it for himself, but for that one goal: Vitesse has to play football again, preferably as high as possible. Rather with a Fiat500 directly on a concrete wall because you want to go through it than with a worrying face on the sidelines. And just when you think, this is meaningless, I hook up, he says a great sentence like: “They should not bite an Arnhemmer, then he looks in color.”
On Monday there is another lawsuit, ‘a turbo-stroedappel’ with three judges. In Arnhem, a ‘home game’ according to the supporters association. I am not looking forward to it for all sorts of reasons and I am secretly happy that I am in London because of a podcast.
In the meantime, part of the Vitesse supporters are ‘underground’. Young PSV-Jong AZ was disturbed on Friday evening with yellow smoke bombs. The indignation outside of Arnhem was great. A real football country had browned en masse for the loss of a relatively large football club. Not here. Here ‘football fans’ point each other to ‘the rules’ that have been violated in the past, as if there is nothing bigger than ‘the rules’. In a real football country, they had also not tolerated that the largest football clubs with two teams can participate in professional football. Sports journalist Jeroen Kapteijns van De Telegraafwho started a lubrication campaign against Schaay in the reporting around Vitesse as a transmission of the KNVB, tweeted: “Annoying for players and the public on the Herdgang.”
For the sake of convenience, he forgot that there is never an audience in competitions of the so-called ‘young teams’. The indignation is almost as much fun as the comment that Vitesse wastes the gun factor. The whole problem is that Vitesse does not have a gun factor.
There is no better place to denounce the hypocrisy of the KNVB than in a match between two ‘young teams’ for whom the holy regulations do not count. Smoke bombs at Young PSV Jong AZ because you are against euthanes of your club, boy. Those who really find this really have to change something. Do some exciting, read a book. It is not the IRA. And if it is seen, I like to be Sinn Féin.
Marcel van Roosmalen Writes a column on Monday and Thursday.