Sports fans have been served well this summer, with a Spanish victory at football’s Euro 2008, Rafael Nadal’s impressive win at Wimbledon, yet another Spanish triumph in the Tour de France by Carlos Sastre and to top it off, the Olympic Games which yielded seven gold medals for the Dutch. But to the genuine football aficionados in the Netherlands all of this is not the real thing. They can’t wait for everything to be back to normal, with the ball rolling in the premier division.
This weekend their long wait is over, as the competition season begins. Everything is back to normal, but there are many changes too, such as a plethora of new faces in the dug-outs. No less than ten out of the eighteen premier division clubs are starting the season under a new trainer. Among them are the top six clubs of last season (see under the picture)
The new trainers of the top-six clubs
PSV Eindhoven - Huub Stevens,
Ajax Amsterdam - Marco van Basten
NAC Breda – Robert Maaskant
FC Twente – Steve McClaren
Heerenveen – Trond Sollied
Feyenoord – Gertjan Verbeek
Hegemony
PSV are chasing their fifth successive national title, which is unprecedented in the premier division. The Eindhoven club lost their top Brazilian goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes to Tottenham Hotspur, Ismail Aissati to Ajax, and also have to make do without Peruvian striker Jefferson Farfan, who is now playing for Schalke in Germany. But this is amply compensated for by the arrival of some young and talented players like Erik Pieters from FC Utrecht, VVV’s Nordin Amrabat and Stefan Nijland of FC Groningen.
Ajax, eager to break PSV’s hegemony, have raided the transfer market, spending some 16 million euros to acquire Heerenveen’s forward Miralem Sulejmani, Barcelona defender Oleguér, and forward Dario Cvitanich from Argentina.
The most remarkable new face at Feyenoord is in fact an old familiar face; that of the Dane Jon Dahl Tomasson who has returned to the Rotterdam’s Kuip stadium after wandering through Italy, Germany and Spain. Dahl Tomasson played for Feyenoord from 1998 to 2002 with considerable success.
The provinces
The major clubs in the provinces are raising expectations, edging ever closer to the traditional top three. FC Twente’s stadium has been renovated, at great cost, while FC Groningen says it is already growing too big for its new Euroborg venue, and Heerenveen are daydreaming about a new stadium accommodating no less than 44,000 fans.
Let’s not forget the ambitions of Alkmaar’s AZ, lavishly funded by businessman Dirk Scheringa, which has grand plans for the coming football year, despite a disappointing 2007-2008 season. PSV, Ajax and Feyenoord have been warned: the provinces are coming.
TV coverage
Off the pitch, much has changed too, taking things back to square one. The Sunday evening highlights, after three years in the hands of the commercial TV broadcasters, have returned to their old host, public broadcaster NOS. They are promising it will not be the same old routine. The set of the Studio Sport programme has had a thorough makeover, new commentators have been recruited, and presenter Tom Egbers says everyone at the programme is excited: “It feels like a first time.”
In the three years that the Sunday football highlights were on the commercial stations, Talpa TV and RTL, many viewers were uncomfortable with the protracted analyses, long-winded presenters and most of all, the interminable commercial breaks. Those viewers can breathe a sigh of relief: Studio Sport will be a fast-paced show, packing the entire competition weekend into just 53 minutes, while the commercial programme used to be an inflated 90 minutes. Mr Egbers and his colleagues will have to drastically edit their scripts. As the anchorman explains: “Don’t say it in ten words when you can say it in seven.”
Hockey girls
The true aficionados do not really worry what channel their football is on. They just want to see the matches, regardless of who is airing them. It all begins this weekend: Vitesse Arnhem meet FC Groningen, PSV go to Utrecht, Ajax confront Willem-II and Feyenoord kick off in Almelo against Heracles.
And Nadal, Sastre, and the Netherlands’ medal-winning hockey girls? We’ll forget about them… until next summer.
By Marnix Quee*
*RNW translation (rk)
30 August 2008
Radio Netherlands]
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All change at the Dutch premier division.
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