De Klassieker: January 29th, 2012 - an excerpt from my Rotterdam journal

“De Kuip is Feyenoord and Feyenoord is De Kuip. So it was and so it always will be.”[1]

Entrance of the Gladiators

In the two hours before kick-off, we ['we' being myself and my long time friend and footballing acolyte Anthony Gallagher] sat in the stadium. A steady stream of people was flowing through already and the atmosphere was taking shape. The resident DJ played random dance music mingled with the odd recognisable pop song to get things going. Before long, Anto and I were nodding our heads and struggling to suppress renegade limbs infected by the music. The most shocking example of the music being played was a remix of Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ – it started off normally enough before exploding into a trance sensation loosely based on the original.

The Ajax players appeared on the pitch first, in their tracksuits, trying to gauge the atmosphere. They needn’t have bothered. They could surely have felt the resentment of these fans seeping through the cracks of the walls of their dressing room. It was no more a chorus of boos then a thunder storm is a few mere drops of rain – this was an incessant torrent of hatred pouring down from the stands, and the Ajax players had no friendly face in their favour (I include Frank de Boer in this assessment: he may be their manager but his face is far from friendly).

This was in utter contrast to the reception afforded to the Feyenoord players as they stepped onto the pitch for their warm-up – the stadium erupted. People yelled frantically in Dutch and English to their heroes, cajoling them, begging them: it had to be today. The hope and expectation mingled in the air with the faint smell of weed wafting through the crowd. 

The stadium was now at maximum capacity. People were gathered on the steps because sitting was no longer an option – standing on the seats was, though. Official attendance was read out as 48,000 but that’s nonsense – there was hardly room to breathe. It’s highly conceivable that an extra 2,000 found their way into the ground.

The pre-match ceremony (I actually recorded the linked video - and yes, my YouTube user name is ReggieBlinker) was like something from a cup final, not a mid-season league game. Fireworks erupted from the opposite end of the stadium to ours as the players entered the pitch to the Feyenoord hymn, ‘Hand-in-Hand’. Some smoke still billowed in the stadium as the Feyenoord players huddled up to cries of “We love you Feyenoord, we do!”

And then the DJ got his last song in: ‘Super Feyenoord’. The talking, wondering dreaming and hoping stopped – this truth could be felt emanating from the fans. We are at De Klassieker 2012. And it was game on.

First half – a Nordic affair

Both sides looked eager to play from the off but the opening 20 minutes were littered with mysterious cases of hole-in-the-foot syndrome, particularly down Feyenoord’s left-hand side in the forms of full-back Miquel Nelom and striker-cum-winger Guyon Fernandez.

Feyenoord were guilty of showing Ajax too much respect in the opening stages (something the fans could never be accused of), allowing them too much space outside the penalty area. This allowed Ajax opportunities for pot-shots from distance which came to nothing. Feyenoord did grow into it, however, with on-loan Manchester City striker John Guidetti – a revelation since arriving in Rotterdam – seeing an effort smothered easily by Ajax goalkeeper, Kenneth Vermeer.

Meanwhile, some random fan behind us must have been yelling controversial remarks because throughout the entire game other bemused onlookers kept turning to see who was doing the shouting – they wore either wry smiles or alarmed expressions as they did so. But it was on the pitch where the truly remarkable things were happening.

Feyenoord captain Ron Vlaar was making Paul Scholes look like Paul Green with a number of deep penetrating passes to his wingers from the centre-back position. Nothing came of these “Alonso’s”, as Anto calls them, until the 15^th minute when Ruben Schaken burst by Ajax left-back Daley Blind and put the ball across. Fernandez arrived but slipped as he connected. There was still enough on it to force Vermeer into a decent finger-tip save. Feyenoord were imposing themselves on the game and De Kuip could sense a goal coming – but it came at the wrong end.

Christian Eriksen, the highly-rated Dane, picked the ball up on the right-hand side of midfield and drove at Feyenoord. They backed up and up until Eriksen found himself facing Nelom 18 yards from goal. He feinted right before ‘Cruyffing’ inside onto his left-foot and unleashing an incredible strike across goalkeeper Erwin Mulder into the far corner of the net. A fantastic goal but a disaster for Feyenoord. 1-0 after 18 minutes.

Yet the reaction of all those Feyenoord was incredible. The stadium fell silent only briefly before roaring again with renewed vigour. The players became boisterous, braver – suddenly they looked more purposeful and incisive, almost liberated in their play. A flurry of half-chances for the Rotterdam side came and went before impressive Ajax skipper Jan Vertonghen attempted to slow the game down. It almost worked.

Suddenly, Guidetti found himself in behind the Ajax backline. Before he even realised himself what had happened, he was chopped down by two defenders, one of whom was Vertonghen. This all happened right in front of our stand. While the Ajax players surrounded the referee, one Feyenoord fan below us, closer to the pitch, stood above the rest and raised a solitary fist in the air. “BELIEVE!” it seemed to scream at Guidetti above the din of everybody else. 

After a short delay, he was allowed to take the penalty:

The Swede showed his belief by smashing the ball into the top red-half corner of the net. The outpouring of emotion, the noise of 50,000 fans, it was all too much for Anto and I and we were swept away by it. Guidetti made his heart sign to the fans as the Hermes House Band’s cover of ‘I Will Survive’ blared out. 1-1 after 28 minutes, and we had ourselves a game.

The tables had turned. Suddenly, Ajax looked afraid. The Feyenoord fans were baying for blood. Every Ajax mistake was cheered. Feyenoord had become a runaway train that only time could stop – and unfortunately for De Boer’s side, time didn’t stop them soon enough.

A Jordy Clasie free-kick from the right-hand side was met at the back-post by Otman Bakkal whose initial header was saved by the feet of the starfish-spread Vermeer. But Bakkal, instead of allowing the ball to go for a corner-kick, squeezed the ball back across the six yard box where Guidetti was livelier than anybody else to steal in and poke the ball home. 2-1 Feyenoord after 41 minutes and it looked like any result was possible.

Second half – a revelatory Clasie ransacking

The beginning of the second half was cagey as Feyenoord sought to pick up where they left off at half-time while Ajax attempted to reassert their early dominance. Anto later confessed that he thought the second half would be a dull stalemate: Ajax would try to break down a stubborn Feyenoord resistance, with the home team either standing firm and seeing the game out or shipping a goal. In light of the recent history of the fixture, his logic made sense.

Thank f**k he was wrong.

           
Five minutes after the restart, Fernandez skipped by two players before delaying his pass to Bakkal on the edge of the box. It was perfectly timed, with Blind playing him onside. One-touch control and a clean left-footed strike into the far corner made it 3-1. Six years of agony was coming to an emphatic end for these fans. De Kuip rocked to its foundations and creaked beneath the jumping feet of those on seats. “DE-DEDE-DEDE-DE-DE-HÉ-OH! FEYENOORD!” They lost themselves in the Super Feyenoord chant, in the delirium caused by everything happening on the pitch which was fast becoming red and white.

           
And when Vertonghen, one of maybe two Ajax players to emerge from the game with any credit, refused to follow the script by acting almost as an auxiliary midfielder, it was young Jordy Clasie who stepped up to become a one man wrecking machine, showing incredible enthusiasm and anticipation to stop Ajax attacks before they had even begun. He showed he had the heart to win the game, more so than any Ajax player, and even if his use of the ball when he won it was at times naïve (he is only 20 after all), his commitment and willingness to put himself on the line was never in doubt. As he matures he will soon learn that the complicated ball isn’t always the best one.

           
Vertonghen was leading his side by example, though, by attempting to single-handily drive his team up the pitch. Unfortunately, he was let down by others who wilted in the tub-cum-cauldron created by the fans: Eriksen found himself more tightly marshalled in the second half and couldn’t find the pockets of space he revels in, while Ajax’s top goal-scorer, Miralem Sulejmani, had been ineffective all afternoon and would probably have been hooked had he not gotten injured with 20 minutes to go. This brings us neatly to two issues of sportsmanship which arose during the game.

(an intermission caused by spitting)

In the first half, Ajax’s right-back, Vurnon Anita went down in his own box clutching his ribs. He may have been elbowed. He didn’t rise right away and Feyenoord had the ball, so it is up to the team in possession to decide if they wish to put the ball out (unless, of course, the referee decides to stop the game, which he didn’t in this case, indicating that he felt Anita to be in no immediate danger). Feyenoord, being so close to goal, played on. The resulting shot from outside the box was scuffed but actually hit the grounded player in the head. As the ball was cleared, Anita got shakily up and had to get on with the game – which he did, with minimum fuss.

           
In any other game, Feyenoord would put the ball out. I’m convinced. But when 50,000 screaming fans tell you to play on in De Klassieker and the only dissenting voices are ten opponents, you’re going to play on – the ten may pose a more immediate threat but at least you momentarily outnumber them.

           
In the second half, a similar situation occurred except in the role reversal: Ajax had the ball and a Feyenoord player was down. Ricardo van Rhijn played the ball to Eirksen, who trotted along the right wing (while a chorus of boos rained down from the fans) before eventually shaping to put the ball out. As he connects, Fernandez barges him out of the way.

Cue an angry Eriksen and a coming together of players from both sides. Technically speaking, Eriksen had every right to continue playing, especially given what had happened earlier, but he chose not to – not quick enough for the liking of Fernandez, though. Rivalries filled with so much intensity, fuelled by so much hatred, make people do silly things.

           
Take what happened when Sulejmani got injured. In the end, he needed to be stretchered off the pitch, from the left-side across to the right. Initially, the physios and stewards couldn’t get him down the tunnel because the barrier gate was locked, so they had to step aside for a moment while it was being unlocked – during this confusion, some fans threw objects at the physios and Sulejmani. And as one of the physios made his way back to the Ajax dugout by walking around the pitch, a fan behind the goal aimed a volley of spit in his direction.

I have seen a few incidents of that nature happen over the years but only on television – to witness such little compassion for fellow human beings, so much hatred for people never met and who, really, are just doing their honest jobs was both disgusting and oddly exhilarating at the same time.

It was at that moment that Anto and I realised that this derby is arguably the most intense in Europe – Feyenoord fans taunt Ajax fans about their Jewish heritage; Ajax fans taunt Feyenoord fans about the Rotterdam bombings. Celtic and Rangers, for example, is also a fierce rivalry steeped in sectarianism and non-related football bigotry, but at least the fans are (just about) allowed to inhabit the same stadium.

A wonderful Dutch woman I was speaking to called Janette, who was sitting beside us during the game, has been a fan of Feyenoord “since I was a little girl.” She was at the game with her two sons. She has been attending games for a long time and believes it is better that away fans are banned from attending each other’s stadiums. “There was too much fighting, not good. Now everyone can enjoy the game.” And enjoy it she did as she told me of Ajax’s Theo Janssen and how he was Dutch Footballer of the Year last season: he did nothing today and was hooked after an hour.

Resumption of formalities

Substitutions were made by both sides as Ajax sought to galvanise their troops and Feyenoord wished to consolidate what they had. With ten minutes to go everything was perfect and it looked as though Feyenoord had done everything necessary to set themselves up for a handy ten minutes. But football isn’t that simple, especially not in De Klassieker…

           
Erwin Mulder was having a good game. Eriksen’s goal would have beaten the best of goalkeepers and he had dealt with everything else confidently, exhibiting a safe pair of hands. But then, he switched off. He received a back-pass on 80 minutes as Feyenoord sought to take the sting out of Ajax’s relentless pursuit of a way back into the game.

Collecting the ball just outside the left-hand side of his penalty area, he should have simply punted it away and forced Ajax to start again. Vermeer had found himself in a couple of similar situations earlier in the game and the Ajax ‘keeper had made a hash of nearly all of them by dawdling, so Mulder had been warned. He didn’t heed that warning.

           
He took a bad touch instead. Dimitri Bulykin was charging at him. A Russian standing at six foot four and built like a Communist tank, this is not somebody you want to be inviting into a 60-40 challenge. Nobody told Mulder, though, who was looking for the perfect pass when Bulykin arrived. Catching the striker out of the corner of his eye, Mulder panicked (naturally) and attempted to clear, but too late – the ball ricocheted off Bulykin and looped high into the sky before bouncing agonisingly into the empty net right in front of us.

As it rose into the air we all knew where it was going. The sense of simultaneous helplessness on the part of the fans as they watched the ball drop almost forced it into the net quicker, just to get the immediate pain out of the way so the nerve-jangling final few minutes could be played out.

           
But like before, stunned silence lasted just a second. As Feyenoord tipped off, the roar resumed louder, fiercer than it was before, perhaps because the fans were angry with themselves for allowing complacency to set in while they were thinking about how they would celebrate their first De Klassieker victory in six years. Now the players fed off that anger and instead of retreating and seeing out the game, they went hell-for-leather in their efforts to ensure victory.

           
But it was a real face-in-hands finish. At 3-2 anything could happen, as they say. Incidentally, this was the score of Feyenoord’s last De Klassieker win six years ago. An omen, perhaps? But as Ajax chased their precious leveller we all began to realise that this wasn’t some ridiculous daydream we had all simultaneously slipped into but that the only person who had slipped into dreamland was the goalkeeper – with potentially real, devastating consequences for us all.

           
This is where characters are made. Now the question was posed: shut up shop or go for the killer blow? Vertonghen pushed further up the pitch, now essentially a centre-forward, leading from the front and urging his troops to fight; Eriksen belied his years by demanding the ball, despite the tightness of the marking around him, and constantly probing; Siem de Jong jinked and jived; and Bulykin loomed large over the Feyenoord backline, waiting for the half-chance.

           
But for all this, Feyenoord had equals: Ron Vlaar continued to spray his passes ‘round from the heart of the defence while remaining as solid as a wall; Clasie continued to harry, block and intercept, nullifying threats before they became dangers; Bakkal timed his runs, always looking to support the front man while also seeking to help out in the defensive effort; and John Guidetti, a brace to his name already, the loanee who has made himself a cult hero, looking for the hat-trick that would surely seal his name in Feyenoord folklore.

           
So, what was it to be? Before 50,000 people, men are men. Anytime an Ajax player was caught in possession, Feyenoord looked to break. The ebb and flow remained and half-chances came to nought. Until finally, finally…

           
Schaken breaks and puts the ball across the Ajax box to Guidetti, whose initial mis-control sees the ball get caught under his feet, and the ‘keeper is coming – but then he gets it out and stabs the ball goalward…GOOOOOOOOAAAAAALL! The next few moments are unintelligible. Seven minutes of normal time left, the boy nets his third, and De Klassieker is in the bag. 4-2 would be the final score. The remainder of the game is spent chanting. So was the half hour following the final whistle.

ROTTERDAM RAVE

The place went insane. It was as if Feyenoord had won the Champions League. The players stayed on the pitch afterwards. Clasie and Guidetti had both been subbed in the dying minutes to standing ovations and were now soaking up the carnival atmosphere they had helped to foster. The fans chanted HÉ-HO VOOR FEYENOORD! rapturously, but just as ‘Luv U More’ by DJ Paul Elstak was starting to play a voice boomed out around De Kuip. It was Ron Vlaar. He had grabbed a microphone and was now commanding the attention of the stadium.

“We love you Feyenoord!

Hé ho!

En als ze scoren!

Hé ho voor Feyenoord!”

The crowd repeated each line after him, except the last one which they chanted in unison: captain and fans. At the end, Vlaar just roared to returning roars of approval each time: “COME ON! COME ON! COME ON!” And as he returned the microphone to its original owner, he yelled “COME ON!” one more time, threw his fist in the air, screamed “FEYENOORD!” and kissed his crest as he went back to his teammates. It was euphoric. 

The stadium was creaking underneath the weight of the revellers and could have collapsed in the delirium, but it didn’t matter – De Klassieker had ended with the right result. Experiencing this sort of higher meaning as an outsider happens only once in a lifetime. They even played ‘I Just Can’t Get Enough’ and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the latter of which burst into a techno trance remix for no apparent reason, but at this stage that was to be expected.

The players walked around the pitch, saluting each stand as they went - it felt like a long time, but eventually they reached us:

            

People leaving the stadium were on another mental plane; whatever constituted normality in their lives could wait till tomorrow – right now, they were in exultation and would drag the high out for as long as humanely possible. On the trams, they banged windows with closed fists whilst chanting and jumping, leaving aware passengers smiling quietly and ignorant passengers looking on in anger mingled with bemusement. If another fan saw you wearing a Feyenoord jersey, he would approach you in excitement and want to talk about the game as if it was his first born child.

           
Although one example in Irish Pub (a name-by-nature haunt which was our second home during our stay in Rotterdam) afterwards indicates that this result means much more to some than any children they may have.

I was chatting to some lad about the game in the bathroom of all places when he asked me for change of €1, which I didn’t have. I suggested the bar, to which he agreed – because he needed condoms from the condom machine.

“This is very important, no mistakes!” he said. With a cheeky wink I wished him a good night and he replied, “Oh, don’t worry, I will,” before miming breaking down the condom machine and air-humping the sh*t out of some imaginary woman. I have no idea if he ever got his condoms. Perhaps nine months from now a little De Klassieker baby will be born who will be christened John after Super Guidetti.

           
When we returned to our conjoined cubed hostel, a random man wearing a faded cream Feyenoord hat approached us. He looked homeless, dressed in a dark green and black puffy jacket, dirty black trousers and white sneakers, and he had been sitting on some steps drinking a can of Carlsberg when he saw us.

Overjoyed by the result and its significance, he couldn’t believe we had been at the game and was clearly so happy with the outcome that he, perhaps, momentarily forgot his troubles (if he had any). Such is the power of the game, to make one feel so elated and united with strangers wearing the same crest.

And although we know we will probably never see as good a game again, Anto and I have vowed to come back. De Kuip is a drug and we are now hooked.

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[1] Vereniging Aandeelhouders Stadion Feijenoord. (Geschiedenis). [Online]. Available from: http://www.vasf.nl/welkom.php