Look past the Netherlands coach’s truculence and you see someone of integrity who cares for football and how it’s played
The 70-year-old walks over to the 24-year-old and peers at what he is watching. His hands flick out in a shrug of incomprehension. “Are these cars racing now?” he asks, bewildered. “Do you really enjoy watching this? I don’t like it. It’s just, ‘Mieeeeuv, Mieeeuuv’ [the sound is majestically Dutch] all the time.” And so Frenkie de Jong’s love of Formula One is dismissed.
The 70-year-old shakes hands with the 20-year-old. “I’m vaccinated. You?” “Yeah, me too,” Jurriën Timber replies. “Thank goodness. Not a wappie.” Wappie is a Dutch word roughly equivalent to “nutjob” that tends to be used for conspiracy theorists.
