How often do you see a football game with goals in the double figures, let alone one in which one side scored twelve of the thirteen goals, let alone in which one player scored eight times? Yet that’s what happened in the Dutch second league game between Sparta and Almere City FC, helped a lot by the latter having had to play with ten men for most of the game after a dumb challenge on Sparta’s striker in the penalty box, but also by their utter incompetence at defending. Every goal they conceded fit the same pattern: attack over the right flank, a pass to the striker who’s completely uncovered and a goal. Sparta’s striker, Johan Voskamp, did well to score eight of these twelve goals but it wasn’t as if Almere’s defenders made it that difficult for him…
Now last year Sparta was still playing in the Netherland’s highest league but got relegated at literally the last moment in the playoffs, while Almere City was still known as Omniworld and not doing well then either, staying in the league by the skin of their teeth. The quality difference between the two is not that surprising, especially when you compare their history: Sparta’s one of the oldest clubs in the country, Rotterdam’s Everton to Feijenoord’s Liverpool, while Almere City has only been playing professional football since 2005 and was largely created because a “big city” like Almere needs a proper football team. Almere being one of those sleeper towns full of people having been driven out of Amsterdam but still working there, whose interests are largely still orientated towards Amsterdam as well. Almere has no real identity of its own but has been desperate to grow one, of which having a professional football club was one part. Judging by the result today the city should’ve saved its money…