Sometimes you have football players who are inextricably linked to a football club. This also applies to Michel van Oostrum, whose name is still mentioned in the same breath as FC Emmen. Not very strange, because the 57-year-old from Amsterdam has the most matches (339) and goals (197) for the Emmen team to his name. The club is now rewarding him for his record with a tile of honor.
That tile of honor will be unveiled on Friday. This will happen at 7 p.m. in front of the main entrance of De Oude Meerdijk stadium, where FC Emmen will play against SC Cambuur an hour later. Shortly after the revelation, general manager Rinse Bleeker tells us something about what moved the club to give the former goal thief a tile of honor. Van Oostrum will then also be presented with a certificate as a lasting memory.
Van Oostrum is the third person with an FC Emmen past to whom a tile of honor is dedicated. This honor previously also went to former team leader Riny van Vilsteren and former FC Emmen coach Dick Lukkien, who twice promoted the club to the Premier League. “The fact that I receive the tile of honor and am also the first player to receive it is actually doubly nice,” Van Oostrum beams.
Coincidentally or not, a lot will come together for the Amsterdammer on Friday evening around the unveiling. Not only because two former clubs of Van Oostrum are taking action with FC Emmen and SC Cambuur, but also because the revelation for a trip down memory lane cares. “Matches between FC Emmen and Cambuur were always special in my time, because there was a lot going on,” he laughs.
One of the most special goals that Van Oostrum scored in the Emmen shirt was against the Leeuwarders. “That was in November 1996,” he reflects. “We were 0-2 behind at halftime, but in the second half we turned it around with goals from René Grummel, Mika Nurmela and me. A very strange, but also beautiful goal, because I scored through my heel. tapped the ball through the legs of Cambuur goalkeeper Wim de Ron,” he remembers. “I knew many players from Cambuur from my time there.”
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