June 23, 2015

Football club brings VIP supporters to away game

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:40 pm

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Deventer’s football club the Go Ahead Eagles held a contest, and the prize was a dream trip to the club’s next away game in Hungary for two on 9 July. Problem is, the club’s away game against Budapest’s Ferencváros was to be held behind closed doors, with no supporters allowed due to some penalization given to the Hungarian club by the UEFA.

The couple who won the prize, Henk de Haan and his wife, a long-time volunteer, were afraid their dream trip would be cancelled. The aptly named Go Ahead Eagles put their heads together and came up with a solution: they are going to make the couple board members of the club today so they can come along. The couple are to appointed to the board later today.

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo of Football by Bramus, some rights reserved)

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August 19, 2014

Protesting free Wi-Fi that doesn’t even work

Filed under: Sports,Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:04 pm

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With a banner that probably made international news because it featured the word ‘fuck’ on it and was written in English, PSV Eindhoven supporters were recently sporting a banner at a game that read “Fuck Wi-Fi, support the team”.

After paying good money to attend a football game, the last thing many fans would be caught doing is staring at their mobile phones. The thing is, free Wi-Fi is great because you can take pictures and post them to social media about all the fun you’re having. You can also throw the score up on Twitter and check if the media has more news on the player they just carried off the field than you would get at the stadium.

Omroep Brabant has claimed that the Wi-Fi connection is crap, which is not good advertising for a tech region made famous by brands like Philips and ASML.

However, many of us in the Netherlands can just turn on 4G and ride the interwebs. Banning something that is free and doesn’t even work seems like a waste of time, but we do get the point that it’s about joining in and not being a douche with your phone.

(Link: www.omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Football by Bramus, some rights reserved)

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August 2, 2014

Louis van Gaal makes club owners richer already

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:22 pm

louis-van-gaal-paul-blankThe football season has yet to start, but new Manchester United head coach Louis van Gaal is already giving the club’s owners plenty to be happy about.

The six children of late American entrepreneur Malcolm Glazer are about to make a load of money by selling 5% of their shares in British football club Manchester United, Yahoo! writes. The share price rose steeply after the announcements of both Louis van Gaal as head coach and Adidas as main sponsor, going from 14 USD to 19.31 USD last Wednesday, raising the value of the club to to approximately 3.2 billion USD.

The Glazer family will make an estimated 155 million USD on the sale and will hold on to the majority of shares. In order to underline their intentions, the shares they are selling have reduced voting rights.

Earlier in his career Van Gaal won major awards with Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern München. In his previous job as coach of the Dutch national team, he managed to reach third place at this summer’s World Cup, the more impressive considering that most his players came from lesser leagues such as the Dutch Eredivisie.

Manchester United’s prospectus warns buyers that the club’s worth largely depends on successes in the European campaign, according to The Independent.

Photo by Paul Blank, some rights reserved.

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June 20, 2014

Boisterous café blames limiter for loud music

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:51 pm

Café Goos in the South of Amsterdam decided to party on with some music after the Netherlands won 5-1 against Spain in the World Cup on 12 June. However, the music was too loud for the neighbours who complained and the café owner was given a warning: pipe down or else it will cost you 5,000 euro next time.

Dutch cafés are required to have limiters on their music installations, often dedicated mp3 players or computers, in order not to exceed legally allowed sound levels. However, the authorities claim that Café Goos’ setup using an iPad was just not working properly. The owner blames the limiter for not working properly, as if he had no control over it, which is lame and will still cost him 5,000 euro if he can’t sort it out.

A football win is not an excuse to make more noise than usual although I am sure many people in Amsterdam would tolerate it if it were a semi-final or a final. Cafés are very often at odds with neighbours over noise in major Dutch cities and is a top complaint around the country. Amusingly enough, the Amsterdam district with the least noise problems as of March 2014 is the South.

(Link: www.parool.nl)

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June 17, 2014

Dutch parody of Chilean football commercial upsets Chileans

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am

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The 33 mine workers of Chile who were stuck underground for 60 days in 2010 have produced a dramatic commercial to support the Chilean football team where they mention parts of their terrible ordeal and what they were able to withstand. Recently, some Dutch comedians decided to make a parody of it, which has apparently annoyed many a Chilean if we believe the media.

Instead of seeing it as an amusing parody of ¢ Chile World Cup commercial, some people see it as Dutchmen taking the piss out of the miners, which I actually find offensive. The way they used the miners to shoehorn a message about Chilean football comes off as over the top and exploitative to me in the first place, and opens them up to criticism regardless. If the miners had made a documentary about their ordeal and the Dutch had parodied that, it would have me leaning more towards the Chileans, but not in this case.

Here is the Dutch parody of Chilean World Cup commercial (with Dutch and not so good English subtitles):

And here is the original, which is much shorter:

UPDATE: I asked an expat friend in Santiago about the parody and he said a Chilean friend had actually sent him the link to the video.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of Football by Bramus, some rights reserved)

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June 13, 2014

Girls don’t do enough sports, too often aimed at boys

Filed under: Health,Sports by Orangemaster @ 7:30 am

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Sport experts from the University Medical Center Groningen and the University of Groningen have concluded that girls between the ages of 13 and 19 don’t do enough sports at school. The problem is that the emphasis is on sports that require balls (football, basketball and volleyball, etc.) and not on what girls actually would like to be doing like dancing, zumba or horseback riding (not all that posh here). Schools seem to be pushing competitive group sports and the girls seem to want individual sports, at least in this article.

What do some experts suggest? Separating the boys and the girls for gym class, which goes against many principles and proper social integration.

Here’s a crazy idea: what about offering something girls would actually like and making the boys follow suit for a change? Is pushing an outdated agenda that makes girls unhappy but keeps boys busy really a proper option?

If I had my way, I’d get all the girls and the boys who want to join on roller skates because it’s super fun and trendy. Or more skip rope, if that is not already being done because boys can pretend they are training to be boxers and girls can show off and even play in groups like at recess.

More co-ed suggestions? Boxing, kick boxing, aerobics, yoga, capoeira, ice skating, you name it.

But for the love of future generations experts have to stop acting like what boys do and want is normal and what girls want is some sort of problem to be solved. I won’t even get into the boys who would rather do something else for a change, either.

(Link: www.bndestem.nl)

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May 13, 2014

Another world cup, another women’s fashion controversy

Filed under: Fashion,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 8:15 am

Back in 2010 Bavaria beer was caught up in controversy during the World Cup in South Africa because of its Dutch orange dresses. The dresses were seen as advertising another beer brand than the main sponsor and some good looking, thin blondes wearing the dresses got arrested, which turned out to be a great marketing stunt if ever there was one.

And now, some shop in Noord-Brabant that sells clothes for bigger women has managed to secure its own bit of free marketing by claiming that this year’s ‘HolánDress’ (cost:12,99 euro), which comes in sizes 34-40 (XS, X, M and L), excludes bigger women when such a garment should be bringing us all together. Apparently, the average Dutch woman weighs 80 kilos and wears size 42, which still means that a whole lot of women and girls will fit into that dress.

The dress is a marketing stunt, a knick-knack. They’ll be more of them as well in the future and they won’t get bigger unless someone makes it a stunt of making one for ‘big gals’. Then there might be whining about being singled out as a fat person from some shop somewhere, mark my words.

How’s about taking the bullshit by the horns and wear a nice orange dress or top (or even a blue, red and white ensemble) that suits you instead? How low on self-esteem does one have to be to want to follow a beer brewer’s fashion statement? Get proactive and shut up. Nobody gives a rat’s ass what you’re wearing in front of the telly. And you can always get off the couch and lose some weight if your life’s ambition is fitting into cheap stunt dresses.

(Link: www.elsevier.nl)

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October 12, 2013

Van Persie new all-time top scorer with 41 goals

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:16 pm

By scoring a hat trick yesterday in a match against Hungary, Robin van Persie became the all-time top scorer of the Dutch national football team. His total is now 41 goals in 80 matches, Dutchnews reports.

The previous record holder was Patrick Kluivert who, being one of the assistant coaches of the Oranje yesterday, congratulated Van Persie after the second goal. Kluivert is now in second place with 40 goals in 79 matches. Two years ago AD still considered Klaas-Jan Huntelaar the most likely pretender to the crown. Van Persie had been a failure at the 2010 world championships in South Africa and in 2011 Huntelaar led the man from Rotterdam with 3 goals in the rankings. Huntelaar hasn’t played much since then whilst Van Persie racked up an impressive 8 goals in the 2014 world cup qualifiers

Both players were born in August 1983 and still have time to work on their personal bests. Huntelaar is now the one who faces the uphill battle though. Dennis Bergkamp was the record holder between 1998 (he took it in typical Bergkamp fashion with a quality goal) and 2003. Up to 1998 Faas Wilkes topped the list for an amazing 38 years and 243 days, nu.nl reports.

Hungary had to win the game to still have a shot at qualifying. The Netherlands were already through—coach Louis van Gaal used the match to experiment, fielding Vlaar and Bruma as central defenders . The Netherlands won the home game 8-1.

(Photo by Ronnie Macdonald, some rights reserved)

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August 6, 2013

Netherlands net exporter of football players

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 8:33 am

This year Dutch football clubs are getting at least 91 million euro for breaking up contracts with players who are set to move to foreign clubs, Volkskrant reports. That number is likely to become even higher since the 2013 summer transfer window doesn’t close until 2 September.

Midfielder Kevin Strootman from PSV (Eindhoven) earned his club the most money. He will move to AS Roma for 20 million euro. Volkskrant points out that the Dutch competition, the Eredivisie, has been drained of attackers. Out of the players that are leaving, five were in the top ten of top scorers last season. PSV had Dries Mertens and Jeremain Lens in that list—the Belgian and Dutchman are going to Napoli and Dinamo Kiev respectively. Ivorian Wilfried Bony of Vitesse (Arnhem) was widely considered too big for the Dutch top competition—his move to English mid-table Swansea seems a bit unambitious.

The budgets of Dutch clubs typically do not extend far enough to retain top players. In the previous season, the ‘poorest’ English club, Queens Park Rangers, had 35 million British pounds to spend on player wages alone. By contrast, Feyenoord, the Dutch number four in spending, has a budget of 34 million euro for the current season—including but not limited to wages. It will come as no surprise that in Volkskrant’s list, England is the top importer in Europe of foreign players, having spent 316 million euro so far. Oddly enough, Spain, a country whose clubs are not exactly poor, beats the Netherlands as an exporter of football players. Its clubs earned 106 million euro at the time of writing.

See also: How to create a football star

(Photo of striker Wilfried Bony by Wikimedia user Ailura, some rights reserved)

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June 4, 2013

Mobile football stadium solves problem of derelict stadiums

Filed under: Architecture,Design by Orangemaster @ 11:20 am

Marcel Klomp, a graduating student from the TU Delft, has designed a mobile stadium that seats 50,000 and can be taken apart to fit in 150 40-foot containers. It is a serious solution to the international problem of building a huge stadium like in South Africa for the World Football Cup or in Beijing for the Summer Olympics with the stadium barely being used afterwards.

His design made from aluminium and steel allows installers to put the stadium up in eight months. “If the stadium is used eight times in 30 years, it will be profitable. It will cost about 250 million euro and can last 50 years”, Klomp claims. A permanent stadium costs much more time and money to build, is usually not profitable and is done out of prestige rather than future need. It is probably time for many countries to stop building uselessly and look at a realistic alternative like the mobile stadium. In fact, one of the reasons the Dutch population is not on board with Amsterdam having put in a bid for the 2028 Summer Olympics is knowing that the entire endeavour is a big loss from the get-go.

Klomp says the interest in his design is ‘overwhelming’, and since it is a graduation project, it needs to be worked out 100%.

(Link: www.kennislink.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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