Apart from C. Buddingh’ and Nico Scheepmaker, I don’t know many writers who were as addicted to football as Jan Wolkers. That is why it was a good idea from Onno Blom, who already wrote a fascinating biography about Wolkers, to now make a separate, beautifully designed book about Wolkers’ love of football: Genius is never sidelined.
The title contains a statement by Jan Wolkers about his greatest football hero, Piet Keizer. Wolkers showed in a broadcast of Summer guests in 1991 – an episode I remember as one of the best ever – seeing some of Keizer’s brilliant moves. For example, there was a splitting pass with the outside of the foot to Johnny Rep, who was able to score. “That was offside, I thought,” said TV commentator Herman Kuiphof at the time. “No, you didn’t think that at all,” said Wolkers, “genius is never sidelined.”
Wolkers spoke so euphorically about Keizer in that broadcast that he felt uncomfortable at home in front of the tube. Keizer was a level-headed, somewhat suspicious man who thought all the fuss surrounding top football was exaggerated. He told a journalist: “It was out of all proportion and for the first time in my life I wanted to respond. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to deal with this kind of nonsense, in the end I just left it like that.”
Theun de Winter, friend of Wolkers and acquaintance of many Ajax players, puts Keizer’s dismissive attitude into perspective in this booklet. “Emperor wooed everything away. But he enjoyed it when his qualities were appreciated.”
Ten years after that broadcast, Jan and Karina Wolkers saw Keizer standing in line at a food wholesaler. Sometimes genius just has to queue. Wolkers took two bottles of Chablis from his shopping cart and fired at Keizer to hand them over. “They talked for fifteen minutes. laughed. And said goodbye most cordially. Two old boys.”
In the football players he admired – in addition to Keizer especially Cruijff and Van Hanegem – Wolkers saw his own biography reflected, writes Blom. That seems to me to be a correct statement. They were boys of humble origins who, like him, had made it to the top with a great creative talent. They were not just nice footballers, but players with great spatial awareness and amazing technique. Wolkers saw them as artists, comparing Keizer to Rimbaud and Van Hanegem to Rembrandt. Overdone? When it came to genius, Wolkers didn’t want to distinguish between artists and sports people.
That football, especially Ajax, has meant so much to Wolkers, has become clear to me especially thanks to this booklet. He was lucky to see a generation of young football players emerge, which will not soon be surpassed in the Netherlands. Wolkers rarely went to the stadium, he preferred to watch television. At Ajax matches he could hardly contain himself, he jumped up, screamed. “No, no chants of hi ha dog cock or anything, but I often shout: God damn, that’s where the ball has to go – and then it often goes there too.”
I recognize something in that surrender, I must confess. If I had to choose between an unpublished, suddenly discovered book by Jan Wolkers and a World Cup final with the Netherlands? Sorry Jan, I wish I knew.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of October 5, 2022