As I said last year, that old Bob Marley song kept going round and round my head during the darkest days of Sandra’s illness. What I didn’t say then was how it came into my head, which also why it’s back now. I hate to admit it, but it’s all Ajax’s fault.
I’m not an Ajax fan even if I live in Amsterdam, as I long ago gave my loyalty to Feijenoord, though for most part this has been academic, as I never followed football all that much other than during European or World championships. But when Sandra got ill and kept being ill, football was one of the things I fled into, something that I could absorb myself in, something that in the long run doesn’t really matter, but which can get me worked up enough not to think too much about what could happen; perhaps most importantly, football was and is something that doesn’t remind me of Sandra, something I don’t associate with her. And so I found myself watching games I never would’ve in normal times, including Ajax playing European matches. Which meant, as in the video above, hearing Ajax supporters singing their songs, of which “Three Little Birds” is a particulate favourite of theirs and it burned itself in my mind, damn them.
Then of course it was a song that embodied a sort of slightly cynical optimism to me; now it just reminds me of better times and I can’t help but get a bit choked up hearing it. So much for finding escape in football…
Sandra would’ve loved this weather. Not the cold so much, as her kidney troubles and other health problems leaving her vulnerable to colder temperatures just like my more proportioned build left me cursing milder weather. Besides which, she always was nesh, stemming from a childhood when winters were routinely bitter cold and central heating non-existing. But despite this, she’d still rather have cold, crisp, clear winter days like today was, then the endless grey and wet misery that’s the usual Dutch winter, when the country draws into itself from November to long into April if you’re unlucky. She had been spoiled with winters in Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall’s relatively southern latitude and gentle caress of the Gulf Stream ensuring almost sub-tropical winters. I remember being there with her in November one year, still walking around in t-shirt when I had had to wear a wintercoat and gloves in Amsterdam the day before…
She’s beyond such cares now of course, today making it exactly three months since she died. Sometimes I wonder if the prospect of another long, grey Dutch winter didn’t help her make the decision not to fight on anymore. I can’t blame her if true, but I do miss her. Especially when something like the video below happens. Four months ago I would’ve rung her to share its awwness, or shown it to her on Youtube the next day, now there’s nobody to share it with, well, expect all y’all:
Adorable, isn’t it? The kitten that is, not Kenny Dalgliesh.
Did you know American Samoa has a national football team? If, like me, you didn’t, you won’t be surprised to learn that it ranks absolutely last on FIFA’s world rankings and regularly does things like lose 31-0 to Australia. Or did, as with the arrival of new Dutch coach Thomas Rongen, they managed to book their first victory ever, against Tonga:
In October they agreed to loan Thomas Rongen, an Ajax-trained disciple of Total Football who had managed four Major League Soccer teams as well as the US Under-20 side for almost 10 years, for the duration of the tournament. The transformation after Rongen’s arrival was, says Brodie, profound. Within a week of the arrival of the “Palagi” – the Samoan word for white off-islanders which translates literally as “cloud-burster” – the improvements in organisation and discipline were extraordinary. Most significantly, though, was the change in mentality his coaching had brought, so much so that when they defeated Tonga 2-1 on Tuesday and drew 1-1 with Cook Islands on Friday there was no complacency – the players were frustrated at not keeping clean sheets.
Rongen has been with the team for less than a month and found the tactical reorganisation easier than the psychological one. “I am steeped in the Dutch football tradition,” he says. “The teachings of Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff and a technical brand of football is my motivation but what I encountered here was the exact opposite. So I had to adapt. I went from an old-style 4-4-2 to a more modern 4-2-3-1 because since it’s obvious that they give away too many goals, I thought four defenders and two holders would help. It’s easier to teach inexperienced players how to defend than to attack but we’ve made great strides in organisation and communication.
Thomas Rongen is not very well known here, having spent most of his playing career after having been trained at Ajax in the various US/American league. He later became a coach, working e.g. at DC United (did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?) and the US national U-21 team. Dutch football coaches in general are very popular for ailing national teams — Guus Hiddink has build his career doing this — and it’s nice to see Rongen do his bit for a national team of a country with a population barely enough for a small town.
Rongen and his coaching is not the only interesting thing about the team though: it must be the only national teams which has an openly transgender person playing:
The other breaker of barriers in the squad is Johnny “Jayiah” Saelua, a fa’afafine, biologically male but identified as a third sex widely accepted in Polynesian culture. She – and she prefers she – is the first transgender player to compete in a World Cup match and has formed a centre-half partnership with the Arizona-based Rawlston Masaniai, who along with other team-mates, calls her “sister”. “There is no discrimination,” she says. “I put aside whether I’m a girl or a boy and just concentrate on playing. I think I add a third dimension to the team, collect my energies and keep the team together, that’s my responsibility as the fa’afafine, the feminine.”
Sepp Blatter has reassured us that racism in football is non-existent, but homophobia is still rampant, with few openly gay players and fewer openly gay players still actively playing, even in supposedly enlightened countries like the Netherlands. And homosexuality is much more accepted (or so it seems) than transgender/genderqueer people still are, so it’s nice to see how matter of fact the American Samoan team is about their team mate’s gender.
Rooney, like Backham before him, is way overrated as a footballer. Good at Man U, dissapointing in the national team, overhyped by the English press, a ood footballer but because he’s English he has to be the best player in the world.