ABU DHABI // Orange fever is beginning to take hold of Dutch football fans as the days tick by to the start of the 2014 World Cup.
“The ‘Orange Fever’ is rising yet again, slowly streets are turning orange. People decorating their streets with orange flags, some even use orange plastic to cover their whole house. In the local bakeries in Holland you can now only get orange cakes,” said Jeroen Dijkgraaf, a 29-year-old architect, who moved to the UAE last year
Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands, and the team is often nicknamed Oranje. “Football is the number one sport in the Netherlands,” said Jeroen.
He said the Dutch are always keen to have their say on the running of the national team.
“During the World Cup, The Netherlands consist of 17 million coaches as everybody seems to have an opinion regarding the team and the way they play,” he said.
The team’s opening match against the reigning world champions will be crucial.
“Four years ago, in South Africa, the Dutch lost the final to Spain. Irony is that Holland’s first opponent in Brazil will again be Spain. So in order to give the start of this World Cup something special we need to win this match and beat Spain,” Jeroen said.
“After the lost final in 2010, a new team was formed with more then 10 young new players. With only 4 star players this will be a hard World Cup for the Dutch to leave a clear mark. However with the support of all the orange supporters it should be possible.”
Even for those who aren’t normally interested in football, like Jeroen’s wife Suzanne, football fever takes hold.
“For me, I am not that fond of football in general, part of the fun is watching the games in a social-setting,” she said.
“During the last World Cup I was in Serbia - after a couple of hours practice my non-Dutch friends were able to sing Dutch football songs as well as the Dutch national anthem. I am looking forward to teaching this again to my friends in Abu Dhabi.
“In general, the Dutch always think they won the World Cup before it has actually started. During the last cup, we reached the finals but lost against Spain after extra time. Two years later, during the European Cup, we were out before we realised it and lost all our group games. Hopefully we’ll do better this time.”
She said the tournament is an event for the whole family to enjoy.
“Daddies get up early on Saturday to bring their little champions to the football field. A couple of hours later, the same fathers act like little boys themselves as they go totally nuts when their favourite team wins or loses.”
The Netherlands first match of the group stages kicks off at 11pm UAE time against Spain at Arena Fonte Nova on June 13.
The side is captained by top goal scorer Robin van Persie – who has scored 42 times for his side.
The other teams in group B are Chile and Australia.
The Netherlands, who are currently 15th in the Fifa world rankings, have made it to three World Cup finals, but have failed to secure the trophy.
They were runners up in 1974 against West Germany, 1978 against Argentina and 2010 against Spain.
ksinclair@thenational.ae
