Last update August 20, 2020 by Javier Argudo
Ronald Koeman It was always a guy with a special character. Although no one doubts that it was a great central, his way of being, On and off the field, he always speak as history shows we discussed in the following article.
That football is more than a sport, It is a statement accepted by more and more people, even by people completely outside football. Simon Kuper in "Football against the enemy"It goes further and asserts that" football provides keys to understanding the world ".
Undoubtedly, without political or social explanation, They could not understand hundreds of times, video or images that happen before, during or after what should be a simple meeting between two teams of eleven players.
GESTURE OF RONALD KOEMAN
The image that precedes these lines is incompressible if not we traveled in time, if we do not retrotraemos forty years before that Ronald Koeman German T is passed through the rear. During the Second World War Nazi Germany took the lead paws Europe. Holland I was hopelessly near Germany, which ended up resulting in the German occupation of their territory for long five years. Five years in which the Dutch tried to oppose the Nazi fortress, structuring an important Resistance. After the Allied victory in the war, Europe was remaking, slowly, while past problems were gradually falling into oblivion is not it?
Hamburg, 21 June 1988. Holland just defeat Germany in the semi-final Euro '88 which takes place in the German country. The euphoria erupts with such virulence in Holland suggesting that what happened there is much more than a football game. More than half of the population takes to the streets, mantean their bikes through the air shouting "we have our bikes" referring to one of the most unique episodes World War II when the Nazis seized hundreds of thousands of bicycles to the Dutch population.
The Dutch felt they had just won much more than a football game. For them the meeting in Hamburg, It was the victory of the resistance against the Wehrmacht, You was the battle that had failed to win four decades ago. Definitely, that night, Holland He went back in time. The story had been turned upside down, It was the Dutch army, orange dress, who he had occupied the neighboring country. Dutch ecstasy was reflected in the photograph Ronald Koeman, what, curiously, He was the only player who exchanged his jersey to conclude the match, he did with his friend Thon and she starred in one of the stories in the history of the sport admitting he had used as toilet paper in the locker room.
"We won the European Championship, but we all know that the semifinal was really our final '.
"I dedicate this victory to our parents and grandparents, who lived through the war ".
Van Breukelen
Both Caló that party in the Dutch society, A couple of months later, a book containing dozens of poems written by literary and footballers published, in which more passages evoking the war that the party.
