Eredivise vs Football
It’s the 10th of August 2014. I’m sat on the sofa on a Sunday watching ADO Den Haag v Feyenoord Rotterdam. I’ll be honest, it’s not great. ADO have 10 men and are well on top of this game. The quality of play hasn’t been very good, and the tackling much worse. No decisive movement or incisive passes either. All in all quite a poor advert for Dutch football, which has certainly taken a battering in recent years.
I have a movie I can watch, and I really want to. An extremely attractive girl at work leant me ‘The Impossible’ DVD, and though I’m not entirely sure why, I think she just liked it and thought I would to. She kind of thrust it upon me, and of course I want to watch it, it’ll be a way to strike up conversation with her, something that I naturally struggle to do. I have one problem though; the football season has started again. I can’t help myself, I’ve looked up and down the TV guide already and seen numerous games that I could watch, even though I know some of them will more than likely be rubbish (note to reader — Feyenoord have just scored in the 1st minute of added time and the end of the second half, great header by Mitchell te Vrede from a set piece, the game has come to life in the 90th minute!!). That’s a bit harsh, I’m not saying they will be rubbish, but when you watch the Premier League week in week out you expect all other games to have the same speed and intensity to them, and they mostly don’t.
I love watching football though, and unlike some people I can actually sit through games like the one I’ve just seen. I like to see how football is played in different parts of the globe, as well as learning about the players, as you rarely get to see them playing. Take the Eredivisie as the example in point, a league that has developed some of the finest players to have graced our football pitches, players like Johan Cryuff ,Ruud Gulliet, Clarence Seedorf, Robin Van Persie and Arjen Robben are fine examples of this. It doesn’t stop there, many players of other nationalities have risen through the ranks at Dutch clubs to become world class footballers; Nwankwu Kanu, Thomas Vermaelen, Jari Litmanen, Fat Ronaldo, the Laudrups and ZLATAN have all graced dutch stadia in the earlier parts of their careers. Dutch clubs are still producing players that can play at the highest level, they just can’t afford to keep them when they get to it.
My point here is really simple; I love football and I’d quite happily watch Seattle Sounders or Oxford United than do almost anything else. It’s a relief that the football season has started again, I have something to look forward to on pretty much every day until the end of May (barring of course International matches) and have something to distract me from the fact that I’m a 31 year old guy who is still without a girlfriend. And I know I’m not the only one.