Wilco Polinder is a fanatic football fan with a very special hobby: he visits all Dutch amateur clubs. At the moment he is making a round along the fields in Drenthe, including in Zuidwolde at ZZVV.
Polinder processes the results on his Facebook page ‘Nederlandse Velden’, which receives many reactions. “I can hardly handle the reactions, but that is just fun. People in the south of the Netherlands also want to know how the clubs in Drenthe are doing and that is also the other way around,” says Polinder. “I’m a big football fan, especially amateur clubs. During the week I go out and visit about 20 clubs a day.”
Bus driver
The football madman is currently heading for the 600 visited clubs out of a total of about 2900. He has been working on this for almost two years. Remarkably enough, he does not visit the clubs on weekends, when football is being played. Polinder: “What I do is ground hopping, others do that, but they also visit competitions. I don’t do that, because I work as a bus driver in Utrecht at the weekend.”
Stand
Polinder visits a total of 117 clubs in Drenthe. He has already visited about half of them. When the football fan arrives at a club, he mainly takes photos and notes. “I shoot the dugout, the goal, the scoreboard and the stands,” Polinder says. “The focus is mainly on the stands, because I really have a weakness for that.”
After each province, he holds an election for the most beautiful grandstand. This summer, Polinder hopes to have been to all Drenthe clubs and he expects that the election can start around that time.
Watch Wilco Polinder’s visit to ZZVV below: