Unintentional parallelism
By Rob Jones | June 8, 2010
Whoa? What?!
I wonder if there’s anyone reading this who remembers the 1996 Euro Cup; the happenings around the Dutch national team in particular. It took me a little while to find it, but let me show a photo that, hopefully, refreshes a bit of memory.
Actually, this is only a partial photo, but it shows the bits that I want to show. You’ll see the coach standing at the table of players in front. There’s a few tables to the left and right that have been cut out of this picture. The important thing to notice however, is the table at the back. Look at it for a second. Then look at the first table again. Noticed something yet? No? Okay, maybe I’ll have to drop a hint. Look at the skin colour of the players in front and then of the players at the back table. Oh!
This photo resembles everything that was wrong with the Dutch team in 1996. I was reading through a newspaper article that looked back on our (mis)adventures on previous Euro and World Cups and this was given a lot of attention. As far as I understood it wasn’t a matter of racism that was going on, merely that there was a group of players within the group of players. The players of the smaller group were unhappy and frustrated about earning less wages than the others. Mind you, this had nothing to do with the Dutch national team, but problems they brought with them from their clubs. The point is, things weren’t talked about until too late. Tempers frayed, things were said and it went so far that one of the players was sent home by the coach.
Reading through the newspaper article, I recognized the situation. I was sharply reminded of a recent event in my own life. I’ve made an extensive post about that already, so I won’t go into that again. The point being though, situations will never get better if people let their frustrations build up. There will come a point where the volcano blows, so to speak. In my not so humble opinion it’s a lot better to talk to each other well before that point is reached.
