In his hometown of Norrköping, he was able to walk on the street almost all his life. In Rotterdam he was accompanied for half a century by Jan and everyone. He again kindly laughed in the photo, sharing signatures. Ove Kindvall, who punctuated Feyenoord (and the Netherlands) in 1970 at the expense of the Scottish Celtic to the first Dutch Europe Cup victory, died this week at the age of 82.
Kindvall’s winning goal is on the retina of every older Rotterdammer. Feyenoord fans called their son Ove. With every reunion in De Kuip he flew over from Sweden. Until he started suffering from memory loss a few years ago. In the fall of 2023 he was also missing around the Champions League match of Feyenoord against Celtic, when the old champions were honored for the umpteenth time.
“The last three months we can’t really talk to him anymore,” said bosom friend and primal-feyenoorder Jan Mastenbroek just before that. “I briefly spoke to him on his birthday. Then I sent him pictures of the championship. But he no longer recognizes many people.”
Rechterertenen
He thanked Kindvalls Roem from a watched inpick in the extension of the Europa cup final in Milan. He jumped the ball from a difficult angle with his big toe along the Celtic goalkeeper, after a Scottish defender had just been touching the ball by hand.
Television commentator Herman Kuiphof cried excited: “Hands, he makes hands, that must be a penalty!” But the Italian referee Lo Bello applied the benefit rule and Kindvall seemed to anticipate that – at least he ignored the call for a penalty kick. And then punctured the ball with an arc in the short corner. “A bit lucky, I have to say that. This was not the intention,” he told in May 2020 at the fifty -year -old ‘lustrum’ NRC.
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Also read: How Ove Kindvall looks back fifty years on the European Cup final against Celtic won.
The ‘winning’ adidas shoe of Kindvall is displayed in the Feyenoord Museum. With the broken health insurance fund glasses of Joop van Daele, match winner in the World Cup final a few months later in the display case.
About Ove Kindvall, teammate Wim van Hanegem said the following on the Feyenoord site: “What we thought was the craziest thing that he played a lot less during the cold months. In the winter he did not score at all and that while he came from Sweden,” said the Kromme that seemed to have forgotten that football in Sweden was a summer sport. “He was a male but as fast as the nits. He was so intelligent and knew exactly when he had to go deep,” said Van Hanegem.
Exactly this happened on that 6th May 1970. Captain Rinus Israel had not yet sent his tight free ball from his own half, or Kindvall had already run in free space. In the same NRC story from 2020, both protagonists looked back on their almost telepathic collaboration.
Israel: “I saw him leave, yes.” Kindvall: “It was a feeling, I saw that he was going to take that free kick.” Israel: “It was an excellent opportunity to give that ball.” Kindvall: “I knew he had a very good kick. If we got a free kick and Rinus stood behind it, I knew: Húp, now I have to go deep.” Israel: “He had to go at the right height and right speed. And everyone is sometimes lucky in his life, so me too.” Kindvall: “I knew that if he would come, I would score. Mad.”
‘San Siro is ours’
Around 25,000 Feyenoord fans witnessed the 2-1 win in San Siro. During the festive spirit in Milan, Kuiphof spoke to millions of television viewers the winged words: “Milan is a bit of Feyenoord. San Siro is completely ours at the moment!” The same Kuiphof had started pronouncing Kindvall a few seasons earlier on his Swedish: Oewe Tsjiendvall. To which Kuiphof in turn was corrupted in Tsjuiphof.
Bengt Ove Kindvall became three times top scorer of the Eredivisie between 1966 and 1971 – he scores 129 goals in 144 league matches. “I was not a strong, powerful number nine, but I could walk, walk a lot, so that opponents no longer knew what I was doing. That’s how I drove big defenders crazy,” he said in the same NRC interview. The only 1.76 meter long childfall was agile and light -hearted for a mid -front. In his youth he did a lot of gymnastics. “That was very important to me. I did that for years. I would not have made it without gymnastics.”
After his famous goal, Kindvall would play one more season in De Kuip before returning to his old club IFK Norrköping in the summer of 1971. In 1975 he went with IFK Gothenburg with football pension. He played 43 international matches for the national team – he scored sixteen goals in the Swedish shit – and participated in the 1970s and 1974 World Cups.
Feyenoord was homesick for the Swedish goaltjes thief for decades, it scourned dozens (failed) center spiers before free kick specialist Pierre van Hooijdonk helped the club at the UEFA Cup in 2002. But as popular as OVE is also Piair Never been. Many Rotterdam children are named after him, as many Amsterdam boys are called Jari, after the Finnish Ajax player Litmanen. Only a statue and a street name never came – the ever -modest Ove Kindvall has never fallen.