Last week Plymouth Argyle played its first match in League One after having been relegated last year and actually won the game, but there was something else strange about the game as well: no press photographers allowed at Southampton. So The Plymouth Herald got amateur cartoonist (and city historian) Chris Robinson to do the reporting instead. One of the results you see above — not bad at all, with a nice old skool Roy of the Rovers feel to it. Not quite an coincidence that, as Robinson says he let himself indeed be inspired by that strip. And it’s not only a nice piece of nostalgia and a clever solution to a stupid club rule, but also a great refutation of Scott McCloud’s idea that you can’t have sequential art in a sequence of one…
Giovanni van Bronckhorst plays his last match ever tonight. It would’ve been nice if he could’ve ended his career by winning a Worldcup, but in any case he has had an amazing career.
Third time unlucky. Dammit. Crap, crap final and Holland choking once again. It’s nice for Spain to finally win a tournament but dammit we deserved more. For some reason the team never got into the game however and so the Spanish won. It’s sad but nothing to be done about it. It’s just rotten icing on the shit cake that the Spanish goal came out of an offside situation.
Oh well. There’s always the European Championships in 2012.
To be honest I’m not too cut up about it, but that’s largely because a) I never really believed in it and b) S. was taken into hospital again earlier this week so I’ve been a bit pre-occupied.
If Holland wins the final tomorrow, will we be singing “one war of independence and one Worldcup”? I think, like me, most of us here started this tournament with some optimism but no great expectations after what had happened in 2008. In the European Championship Oranje started brilliant, defeating both France and Italy with devastating ease, but flamed out early against Russia. At the start of the Worldcup therefore I thought we would make it out of the group phase but was unsure about anything else. As Oranje kept winning and winning I started to hope, but I still don’t believe we will actually win tomorrow…. I want it so bad though I can taste it and with me the entire country — over twelve million people watched the semi-final out of a population of sixteen million.
And if we do it’s in no small part due to Dirk Kuijt, one of the hardest working men in the squad, somebody who was taken for granted before the finals and who was called on to be replaced by one of the “big four”: Robin van Persie, Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart and Arjen Robben. Those were the supposedly best attackers in the squad, and if Kuijt was sacrifised than they could all play together. Fortunately Bert van Marwijk remained loyaal to Kuijt and he kept his place, proving his worth on several occasions. Kuijt worked hard in both attack and defence, scoring once and giving several assists, also helping save at least one goal that cou;d’ve knocked Holland out of the tournament. He’s a hard worker and completely unselfish, a good footballer but not one who has the kind of talent and skills to not have to work at it. Where van Persie is brilliant enough just to need one single moment to determine a game, Kuijt has to make the effort the full ninety minutes to do the same. He’s the type of footballer I like the most, a true Feijenoord player.
If Kuijt makes us champions of the world, the Dutch team will get a triumphant tour through the canals of Amsterdam — houseboat owners are already panicking. If it was a myth that several houseboats sank back in 1988 when Oranje became European champions, it came pretty close as the video above shows. If they win, they will arrive in Amsterdam on Tuesday and some two million people are expected to show their appreciation. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll be there, whether or not I can be there, but it would be a moment to never forget…
For the longest part in the Worldcup Holland was barely noticed. The world press talked about how badly England and France and Italy did and how Germany had a good youthfull team but which was not quite up to winning the title and how it was going to be Brazil or Spain finally or perhaps even Argentine for the win. Even after winning every game in the group phase, after winning the next match against Slovakia not much attention was paid — Brazil would puliverse the Dutch was the general opinion. It was only after Brazil was beaten like a redheaded stepchild that the press sat up and took notice.
Suddenly I know how the Germans felt through all those tournaments when they were cruising towards yet another title and everybody condemned them for not playing proper football. Because suddenly Holland as well is accused of not playing our usual beautiful football and only winning by making it impossible for others to play, by diving and cheating. The comments on this Guardian thread are typical.
It’s gratifying. Let them moan, as long as Oranje wins I’m not bothered.
