During a visit to Stockholm, two former players of FC Groningen appeared on the retina of Hans Nijland | sports column
Last week I was away in Stockholm for a few days with my daughter Daantje. A refreshing experience. Instead of stadiums we visited museums. ABBA’s stood out. Youth sentiment.
The ABBA Museum is located in the Djurgården district. My thoughts went back to Simon Tibbling, the Swedish talent we brought from Djurgårdens IF to FC Groningen in 2014. I will never forget his debut against Ajax. What a match… Afterwards I received a text from none other than Arjen Robben. Director, you have brought in another very nice player. Unfortunately, things turned out a bit differently later.
In the evening in the hotel I read that another favorite, Tjaronn Chery, is temporarily maintaining his fitness at FC Groningen. Who knows, who knows, I immediately thought, he might end up playing football for our FC again. I will never forget that at a certain point Tjaronn wanted to take a step. There was interest from a club from the United Arab Emirates. They wanted to meet at Schiphol. I said fine, we would like to sit down with those people, but one thing: let them know that it only makes sense if they have an opening bid of at least two million euros.
No sooner said than done. We met at the Hilton. There was quite a group of them. There was even a sheik. What is happening? They offered one million. I said to Henk Veldmate: come on, we’ll get on again. Those people were left in amazement. We were already driving in the polder when we got the call. ‘What are you making?!’ I said we weren’t going to be fooled. Nice contest. A whole mess of cake followed. They still wanted to meet us somewhere. Okay, I said, then come to Van der Valk in Emmeloord. We will make another stop there.
The whole party came back in, the sheik in the lead. They added one bonus after another, but stayed at that million. It didn’t work out. I got irritated. It was almost noon when I said in my best English: mister, it’s better that you have one bird in the hand then ten in the air . Veldmate almost choked on his Bacardi cola. The deal fell through. Chery was later sold to Queens Park Rangers for three million. The moral: you rarely score with mountains of gold.