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gerbieFOOTBALL IN ST.JULIEN DES LANDES (June '95)
Summer 1995 I worked as a children's courier in France for one of the camping-tour-operators who will sell you a luxury tent or mobile home for the price of an apartment. The fact that the children can play outside all the time and also are being kept busy by the children's couriers activities makes a lot of families choose this kind of holiday.
However much I sometimes struggled to offer a varied programm for the kids and however much I do like football, usually I leave the beautiful game out of the programm. The last time I did try the 4 'til 7 year olds decided after 5 minutes they had had enough and I ended up sitting on top of a climbing reck for the next 175 minutes of my session keeping an overview of the playground.
Somehow this summer football is being played a lot though. On tuesday, my only day off, we played the other British tour-operator on site. Normally you use your day off to get away as far as possible from your working place, or get very drunk. If you could combine the two yor luck seemed to be never ending.
I decided to be back in time for the first match anyway. When nobody stepped on to be the referee, I volunteered to do so for the first half. Only 8 years before I became regional champion in a quiz about the rules of the game for youth players. Not that you need to know more than some basic rules in a campsite kickabout, but anyway. Obviously nobody wanted to take over for the second half and I sacrificed this time. My help wasn't really necessary anyway. Our team was threathening to reach double digits, if I hadn't adapted the rules completely and see off-side more often than you could spot a replica Cantona-shirt in a Manchester United fanstore. Somehow I managed to award a penalty the only time the opponents came close to our goal and with the consolation goal the match ended 9-1.
Campsite kickabouts have got their own set of rules. This is the time when fathers are trying to impress their children. "Normally I'm a couch potato, but actually I'm a really sporty kind of guy", you see them thinking. They're wrong. It is a time when sons want to beat their father, proving that Oedipoes still comes around once in a while. 14 years' olds think they are old enough to play with the adults, because they scored once for their county. They are wrong as well. Sunday league amateurs feel like pro's, when they see who's around them in their team: middle aged and overweight men. The wifes, daughters, sisters and girlfriends that normally hate the beautiful game every minute it is broadcasted at home and wouldn't even come close to a football stadium even if Harrods decided to have their annual sale in one, suddenly turn into the biggest fans. They cheer for their men, reaching a volume not disimilar to one produced by teenage-girls when their boy-group idols step on a stage.
The dads are the really pathetic figures on the pitch though. 50 weeks per year their kids see them come home, drop down on the sofa, their only physical effort being the opening and emptying of a beercan and touching the buttons of the remote control in search for the highlights of a second round FA-cup replay or some obscure Argentinian league match. And suddenly on their annual holiday he takes of his shirt (his side are the real men, they play without, the only reason they would allow a female to play on their team) and displays more skin than a semi-big hospital would need for a year of car-crash victims. You can see the expression on their kids' faces rapidly turning from amazement to shame.
"Is your dad playing ?", "No, mine doesn't like football, he's out on the mountain-bike", he lies, just when his father misses another easy chance. To make matters worse he looks to the side to check of his son's still watching, waving as well, completely embarrassing the product of his loins.
The second match I played for the opposition. They were short, whereas we had too many. It was only a friendly I thought, scoring once, beating 'our' team 2-0 in revenge of last week's trashing. Not until then I realised how serious people took a campsite kickabout. "If you hadn't played him (It was me he was referring to !) you would have never won." I overheard one of our guests say, going back to playground arguments. As if I was really good. Children refused to come to the activities I organised the day after, others did show up, but refused to talk to me. I was a traitor for at least a week.
Week 3 brought us a new Dutch team-member. Ivo claimed he played for Wageningen in their youth team. The second division team has gone broke shortly after that time. He could have been a pro, had he chosen to do so, but still saw his old mates (Mark Overmars) regularly in the Arnhem nightlife. Most of my colleagues were delighted with our new star. His debut wasn't what he expected though. Sure, he had skill. He regularly went solo past 4, 5 or even more men. The only thing was he did this in midfield and hardly progressed when doing so.
The opposition had a player who apparently had made Liverpool's second team. To prove this, he wore their away strip every day of his fourtnight's holiday. I trust the scousers not to have had too many injuries in those days. Battling with Stockport could have been the result if they would have had to bring our star on. That week we won 5-3 in the best match until then. None of the 2 stars scored, I did twice, for my own team, therefore was forgiven by all the children.
Then in june we had a guest that would made us unbeatable. His name was Andy Watson and our only Scottisch colleague remembered him playing for Aberdeen and Leeds. At the moment our man was a coach at Motherwell, a club that had qualified for European football after one of their best seasons in their history. They also had a Dutch defender called Van der Gaag, who came from PSV to Scotland. In Britain you could have found 14 in each dozen of his kind, but in 1995 Dutch football was still highly rated on the island and as he played for PSV, a Dutch topteam, he couldn't be bad.
Since 1997 Mitchell's back in the Netherlands, playing for a mediocre team, showing the skills that would have caused Alan Hansen to use the words 'sloppy' and 'defending' so often in one sentence, he would have made the Guinnes book of records.
But Mr. Watson decided after a difficult season to take a holiday in France. If I tell too much about his two daughters who came to my activities regularly I would probably sound like a Belgian, preparing a party for some politicians, so I will stick with the remark that I could see them become great sporters one day, should they choose to do so.
Mr. Watson didn't really look like a former top-player, but as soon as he entered the pitch you could see he was. The match was an-anti climax, as it turned out soon that we wouldn't have needed anybody over-average to beat this week's opposition. Where Ivo tried to impress our hero with several of his neverending soli, our big man showed what football was really like. Never was he far away from where on a normal pitch would have been the middle circle. But where in previous matches the ball, following British custom, hardly touched the grass on the midfield, this week the leather seemed to have a magnet in it, always ending up at the feet of this baldish bloke, who then with one, sometimes two touches, did something that no-one anticipated, without exception something good.
He won every 50-50 ball, had several assists, showing us that real class always comes out. To make things a bit more exiting, at half time with us being 8-0 up, he decided to join the opponents, taking 2 of our best players with him. Even that wasn't enough. He still showed some flings of excellence, put strikers alone in front of our goalie, but his teammates were useless. At 11-0 it was time for the BBQ.
That season I followed Motherwell more than any other European club. At least I did an effort, which is difficult enough as my information sources where French and later on Austrian regional papers. The preliminary rounds of the Uefa-cup turned out to be too complicated. Probably to the disappointment of Ivo who had been promised tickets should Motherwell end up playing a Dutch, Belgian or German team. Their Finnish opponents ended up playing PSV Eindhoven. A missed chance for Van der Gaag, but also for us, Dutch Motherwell followers. Not that we knew much about the team, but at least we knew Andy Watson.
They didn't do too well that season. After the European disappointment, the league wasn't a hit either. Two good seasons were followed by a spell of mediocrity. Apparently my favorite has left Motherwell already.
The weekly matches were abandoned the week after he left. The high season had started and French, Dutch and German tourists felt left out when the British played their game. That's a united Europe for you.
Summer 1995 I worked as a children's courier in France for one of the camping-tour-operators who will sell you a luxury tent or mobile home for the price of an apartment. The fact that the children can play outside all the time and also are being kept busy by the children's couriers activities makes a lot of families choose this kind of holiday.
However much I sometimes struggled to offer a varied programm for the kids and however much I do like football, usually I leave the beautiful game out of the programm. The last time I did try the 4 'til 7 year olds decided after 5 minutes they had had enough and I ended up sitting on top of a climbing reck for the next 175 minutes of my session keeping an overview of the playground.
Somehow this summer football is being played a lot though. On tuesday, my only day off, we played the other British tour-operator on site. Normally you use your day off to get away as far as possible from your working place, or get very drunk. If you could combine the two yor luck seemed to be never ending.
I decided to be back in time for the first match anyway. When nobody stepped on to be the referee, I volunteered to do so for the first half. Only 8 years before I became regional champion in a quiz about the rules of the game for youth players. Not that you need to know more than some basic rules in a campsite kickabout, but anyway. Obviously nobody wanted to take over for the second half and I sacrificed this time. My help wasn't really necessary anyway. Our team was threathening to reach double digits, if I hadn't adapted the rules completely and see off-side more often than you could spot a replica Cantona-shirt in a Manchester United fanstore. Somehow I managed to award a penalty the only time the opponents came close to our goal and with the consolation goal the match ended 9-1.
Campsite kickabouts have got their own set of rules. This is the time when fathers are trying to impress their children. "Normally I'm a couch potato, but actually I'm a really sporty kind of guy", you see them thinking. They're wrong. It is a time when sons want to beat their father, proving that Oedipoes still comes around once in a while. 14 years' olds think they are old enough to play with the adults, because they scored once for their county. They are wrong as well. Sunday league amateurs feel like pro's, when they see who's around them in their team: middle aged and overweight men. The wifes, daughters, sisters and girlfriends that normally hate the beautiful game every minute it is broadcasted at home and wouldn't even come close to a football stadium even if Harrods decided to have their annual sale in one, suddenly turn into the biggest fans. They cheer for their men, reaching a volume not disimilar to one produced by teenage-girls when their boy-group idols step on a stage.
The dads are the really pathetic figures on the pitch though. 50 weeks per year their kids see them come home, drop down on the sofa, their only physical effort being the opening and emptying of a beercan and touching the buttons of the remote control in search for the highlights of a second round FA-cup replay or some obscure Argentinian league match. And suddenly on their annual holiday he takes of his shirt (his side are the real men, they play without, the only reason they would allow a female to play on their team) and displays more skin than a semi-big hospital would need for a year of car-crash victims. You can see the expression on their kids' faces rapidly turning from amazement to shame.
"Is your dad playing ?", "No, mine doesn't like football, he's out on the mountain-bike", he lies, just when his father misses another easy chance. To make matters worse he looks to the side to check of his son's still watching, waving as well, completely embarrassing the product of his loins.
The second match I played for the opposition. They were short, whereas we had too many. It was only a friendly I thought, scoring once, beating 'our' team 2-0 in revenge of last week's trashing. Not until then I realised how serious people took a campsite kickabout. "If you hadn't played him (It was me he was referring to !) you would have never won." I overheard one of our guests say, going back to playground arguments. As if I was really good. Children refused to come to the activities I organised the day after, others did show up, but refused to talk to me. I was a traitor for at least a week.
Week 3 brought us a new Dutch team-member. Ivo claimed he played for Wageningen in their youth team. The second division team has gone broke shortly after that time. He could have been a pro, had he chosen to do so, but still saw his old mates (Mark Overmars) regularly in the Arnhem nightlife. Most of my colleagues were delighted with our new star. His debut wasn't what he expected though. Sure, he had skill. He regularly went solo past 4, 5 or even more men. The only thing was he did this in midfield and hardly progressed when doing so.
The opposition had a player who apparently had made Liverpool's second team. To prove this, he wore their away strip every day of his fourtnight's holiday. I trust the scousers not to have had too many injuries in those days. Battling with Stockport could have been the result if they would have had to bring our star on. That week we won 5-3 in the best match until then. None of the 2 stars scored, I did twice, for my own team, therefore was forgiven by all the children.
Then in june we had a guest that would made us unbeatable. His name was Andy Watson and our only Scottisch colleague remembered him playing for Aberdeen and Leeds. At the moment our man was a coach at Motherwell, a club that had qualified for European football after one of their best seasons in their history. They also had a Dutch defender called Van der Gaag, who came from PSV to Scotland. In Britain you could have found 14 in each dozen of his kind, but in 1995 Dutch football was still highly rated on the island and as he played for PSV, a Dutch topteam, he couldn't be bad.
Since 1997 Mitchell's back in the Netherlands, playing for a mediocre team, showing the skills that would have caused Alan Hansen to use the words 'sloppy' and 'defending' so often in one sentence, he would have made the Guinnes book of records.
But Mr. Watson decided after a difficult season to take a holiday in France. If I tell too much about his two daughters who came to my activities regularly I would probably sound like a Belgian, preparing a party for some politicians, so I will stick with the remark that I could see them become great sporters one day, should they choose to do so.
Mr. Watson didn't really look like a former top-player, but as soon as he entered the pitch you could see he was. The match was an-anti climax, as it turned out soon that we wouldn't have needed anybody over-average to beat this week's opposition. Where Ivo tried to impress our hero with several of his neverending soli, our big man showed what football was really like. Never was he far away from where on a normal pitch would have been the middle circle. But where in previous matches the ball, following British custom, hardly touched the grass on the midfield, this week the leather seemed to have a magnet in it, always ending up at the feet of this baldish bloke, who then with one, sometimes two touches, did something that no-one anticipated, without exception something good.
He won every 50-50 ball, had several assists, showing us that real class always comes out. To make things a bit more exiting, at half time with us being 8-0 up, he decided to join the opponents, taking 2 of our best players with him. Even that wasn't enough. He still showed some flings of excellence, put strikers alone in front of our goalie, but his teammates were useless. At 11-0 it was time for the BBQ.
That season I followed Motherwell more than any other European club. At least I did an effort, which is difficult enough as my information sources where French and later on Austrian regional papers. The preliminary rounds of the Uefa-cup turned out to be too complicated. Probably to the disappointment of Ivo who had been promised tickets should Motherwell end up playing a Dutch, Belgian or German team. Their Finnish opponents ended up playing PSV Eindhoven. A missed chance for Van der Gaag, but also for us, Dutch Motherwell followers. Not that we knew much about the team, but at least we knew Andy Watson.
They didn't do too well that season. After the European disappointment, the league wasn't a hit either. Two good seasons were followed by a spell of mediocrity. Apparently my favorite has left Motherwell already.
The weekly matches were abandoned the week after he left. The high season had started and French, Dutch and German tourists felt left out when the British played their game. That's a united Europe for you.
Spain a Contender in World Cup 2006
Date: 2005-12-15 04:18 am (UTC)When the standoff did at last came it was dragged out, with a horde of footballing celebrities taking balls to pick out the teams. Again, a soccer fan has to accept that the presenters and celebrities were being paid off by the second as they struggled to make this non-event into a television spectacular. This should have taken no further than fifteen minutes to carry through, but no, soccer reporting went on for a undivided three hours! Because this is an indication of affairs to hail it is no question that the tourney will take an entire calendar month to finish.
When the dust settled on the over padded proceedings in Leipzig, England came out of it rather well. Notwithstanding having traditional rivals for Sven's loyalty, Sweden, in the group, Paraguay and Trinidad & Tobago are surely there just to make things fair. With the top two from every group coming along to the second round, England are favorites to proceed into this phase with out too much trouble. Depending on the setting in both England’s group (B) and the Germany / Poland group (A) the substitutions perchance set up an early crunch match with the hosts. Even so this would bank on either Germany or England neglecting to win their various groups and an England vs. Poland second round match is tremendously additional probable. Providing this potential banana skin can be negotiated, the usual is that England will crash out on penalties in the quarter finals to either Holland or Argentina. All England buffs, notwithstanding the optimism that usually rings the ballyhoo to a world cup, hold a sensation of the inevitable heroical defeat in the latter stages of the tourney.
Perhaps the most intriguing groups are C, where Holland and Argentina are drawn jointly, and E, where Italy takes on USA, Czech Republic and Ghana. Normally ho-hum starters to tourneys, and having broke down to go on from the group stages last time around, Italy stand a tough task onwards. Having been drawn with the very much improving USA and a Czech side who are beginning to indicate signals of the retuning glory days with an mythical performance in the last Euro Championships, Italy may be the competitors first large casualty, with Ghana being very tremendously an unsung entity. Group C caters to an early clash of the prominent boys, where the Dutch face are good deal better than their ungraded position suggests, but both Holland and Argentina need be firm enough to overcome Ivory Coast and Serbia & Montenegro to win to the second round.
Historically it has been very rocky for a South American squad to win a world cup in Europe and at first site Brazils ranking as clear front-runners might seem a little generous. Notwithstanding, the game is not the equal as it has been in the yesteryear and several of the Brazilian team already frolic in top European sides in England, Spain (http://www.vivlonx.com) and Italy.
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