Edward Dekker’s sporting moment: an evening of Studio Football

To start with the riots: they are of course too bizarre for words. It completely overshadows AZ’s success in the Conference League. A lot has been said and written about it and if it wasn’t bad enough, the disturbances with Legia Warsaw would later be added to that. Not a black page, but an entire book that you would like to throw straight into the fireplace.

Much more fun is of course the enormous success that AZ Under 18s are achieving in the Youth League. Beating big clubs and then winning the final in Switzerland. An unforgettable experience for those boys, but certainly also for me. If only because NH decides that ‘we’ have to go to Nyon after reaching the final on Friday. To be clear, the match is Monday.

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Everything is set up in a hurry. Who can go there? Accreditations must be applied for. Hotel booked. Car arranged. Toll vignette? We’ll arrange it later. Go. To go. I remember sitting in the stands as a reporter at an FC Volendam match on Friday evening and that the next morning I drove to Switzerland by car with my colleague Frank van der Meijden.

A special trip with a great ending. Read Frank’s story earlier this week again. Late on Tuesday evening we come home a little exhausted, but satisfied. It’s great that we experienced this success live.

Complete chaos FC Volendam

The most special thing about this year remains the complete chaos in which FC Volendam finds itself. From the Houdini act with which coach Wim Jonk saves his team from relegation, chairman Jan Smit’s tantrum during the supporters’ evening in De Jozef to the complete dismantling of Team Jonk a few weeks ago. The six-episode documentary on NPO 1 already gave a nice insight, but what happens next at the FC cannot really be described.

All the arguing not only made it to De Telegraaf, but also to Shownieuws, Even tot Hier and therefore also to Studio Voetbal. After the bomb has exploded, I receive a call asking if I would like to be a guest in Studio Voetbal on Sunday evening. With Jack Mühren, brother of Arnold and Gerrie, I am now making the third season of the football talk show De Aftrap from Volendam. That’s why they come to us.

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Jack, who is also the FC stadium speaker and, above all, a Volendammer, emphatically does not want to take sides in the tribal conflict. However, he can characterize the sentiment in the village better than anyone else on the broadcast. As a regional journalist, I am there to provide clarity. Yes, Jan Smit has done a lot of good for the football club. And yes, the Supervisory Board is not wrong to label the financial risks that FC Volendam took as ‘very high’ for an investment product.

The whole issue is discussed in about seven minutes. The questions have been reviewed in advance. The conversation from the front row is clear and tight.

A beautiful experience to experience. Normally I watch Studio Football at home from the couch, after presenting the NH Sport radio broadcast earlier that day. Now I drive to the Media Park after NH Sport and experience the program up close.

Detection gates

As guests, we do not have to stand in line and go through the detection gates. We are promptly picked up and taken to a cozy room with coffee and something tasty. From the couch we watch a big screen showing Spanish football. After a visit to the make-up artist, we see how the table guests trickle in one by one. They introduce themselves nicely and the conversation immediately turns to what unites us: football.

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Fifteen minutes before the start of the live broadcast, we all walk towards the studio where the audience is already neatly in place. Nothing is left to chance. Of course, no phones on during the broadcast. Furthermore, the urgent request not to look at the screens, but at the table and of course to applaud enthusiastically. They have a special man for that at Studio Voetbal, as former national coach Guus Hiddink had already told us in De Aftrap.

TV stars

Successively, Sjoerd van Ramshorst, Ibrahim Afellay, Arno Vermeulen, Pierre van Hooijdonk and Bart Vriends are called to the table like true TV stars to thundering applause. I notice that they are a bit uncomfortable, but that certainly applies to Jack and me when we receive that welcome.

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The broadcast itself flies by. Afterwards there will be a brief opportunity for everyone to take photos and the audience will be led out of the studio. We go back upstairs. The coffee with almond stick and gingerbread has now been exchanged for beer, soft drinks, toast and chips.

An initial evaluation immediately follows. That the sound of the audience is not yet optimal and why a comical image fragment of a stumbling Steven Berghuis did not make it to the broadcast? And of course whether ‘the Volendam item’ was discussed satisfactorily. With a nice bottle of wine as a thank you, I get into the car and head home just after midnight.

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It was a beautiful evening to experience. While at the regional broadcaster we are forced to take on many things ourselves with a limited budget, tonight I was a guest at a very professional and well-organized organization.

Bicycle pump

I think back to it when, a few days later, during the broadcast of De Aftrap, I take a bicycle pump from the trunk of the car to inflate a football. The ball was also recently deflated at Studio Voetbal. A few minutes later in the broadcast, presenter Sjoerd van Ramshorst was neatly handed an inflated copy. In Volendam the presenter simply does that himself, I joke.

Edward Dekker