PicoBlog

This is the second in a series of Dutch Soccer Weirdos, on weirdos who are Dutch and also people in soccer. The first weirdo addressed was Louis van Gaal.

Johan Cruyff fits into this category as well. In fact, he invented it.

Up next: Wesley Sneijder, a galactic weirdo.

I fear we have no choice but to begin with the song and the attendant video.

We Dutch were a proud nation once. The world’s foremost merchant country just a few hundred years ago, establishing trading posts all over the globe and growing so prosperous that this era is still referred to as the “Golden Century.” Not “Golden Year.” Or “Golden Decade.” No. “Golden Century.” But the culture eroded slowly from there, in spite of the best efforts of a few scrappy painters. And all hope was lost when a new music form emanated from the Netherlands in the 1990s: hakken. Loosely translated as “chopping.” It’s a frenetic rave dance that put a final nail in the coffin of any lingering notions of Dutch relevance on the international stage.

No nation capable of making music this awful can also lay claim to respectability.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I stumbled on a video of a retired Wesley Sneijder, Dutch soccer hero of the aughts, performing a hakken song. Because Sneijder and hakken are of a piece, the personification of modern Dutch decay, of tastelessness.

The song is called Koning Toto and is an advertisement for the Toto lottery ahead of Euro 2020. It crowns our protagonist and vocalist, Sneijder, as the king.

Press play at your peril.

I’ll translate some of the lyrics:

I’m king of soccer,

This is my terrain.

I used to do it with my feet,

Now with my brain.

I’m sorry. I can’t bear to do more. It’s horrendous, and entirely on brand.

It was apparent early on in Sneijder’s career that he might form a magnificent national team attack with Feyenoord’s Robin van Persie and FC Groningen’s Arjen Robben. They were all un-Dutch in their own ways. Van Persie was the spoiled-rotten son of divorced artists, bringing a Bohemian sensibility to a classical street player. Robben, hailing from the unassuming countryside, was an incorrigible dribbler, a trait usually drummed out of youth players the instant they set foot on a Dutch field. And Sneijder, well, he was tiny—growing to only 5-foot-7 in the tallest nation in the world—yet carried around a towering self-regard that grated on Dutch modesty.

All his career, he would be mocked for his height. A popular Dutch radio show referred to him only as “Kabouter Wesley,” or “Hobbit Wesley” and joked that he was prone to tripping over postage stamps. But at its core, the ridicule wasn’t about his vertical challenges. It was about Sneijder’s unshakable self-confidence.

Not even Ajax, the club that had reared the motor-mouthed Johan Cruyff, could recall another youth player who talked so much and so brashly. Sneijder was the son of a cleaning lady and a mechanic for playground slides who had to borrow money just to afford the gas to drive him to Amsterdam for practice.

But at the Ajax academy, Sneijder rocketed through the ranks as a classical playmaker and was not only a regular on the first team but a member of the national team by 18. During one game, Ajax manager Ronald Koeman decided that Sneijder couldn’t play in the same midfield as his peer Rafael van der Vaart and benched Sneijder. When Sneijder came on and scored a goal as a substitute, he ran right at Koeman along the sideline and gave his befuddled coach the middle finger while yelling “Fuck you” so clearly that every camera in the stadium picked it up.

Soon, rumors swirled of a transfer to Spain. Sneijder gave a press conference to declare that he had made up his mind and would be staying with Ajax for the 2007-08 season. A few days later, he signed with Real Madrid. There, he became rich and a close acquaintance of vodka. He was the life of the party.

He didn’t last at Real and was sweettalked into coming to Inter Milan by Jose Mourinho, who texted him daily. The cocky little men got along famously—“He could have been my father,” the pupil proclaimed. Sneijder was the lynchpin to Inter winning Serie A, the Italian Cup and the Champions League in 2010.

He could be counted on to lead his teams to glory but was just as likely to destroy the peace in the locker room. Once, he went up to national team backup goalkeeper Piet Velthuizen and, in front of everyone, asked him how much money he made. When Velthuizen told him, Sneijder responded: “Don’t you think it’s funny that I make 20 times as much as you?”

Sneijder and his arch-nemesis, van Persie, argued over who got to take the free kicks. Assistant coach Frank de Boer finally decided that it should be Sneijder because “Where else am I going to put that Smurf when we get a free kick?” Others had taken to calling him Smurf as well.

Sneijder reportedly became so insufferable that the coaching staff considered booting him off that Dutch team that almost won the 2010 World Cup altogether. That summer, Sneijder was named the second-best player at the World Cup for his silver medal effort.

After the tournament, Sneijder made a very public conversion to Catholicism in order to marry for the second time, to Dutch TV personality Yolanthe Cabau van Kasbergen. She was the kind of starlet who won more acclaim for her beauty than any of the actual work she did. And their marriage completed Sneijder’s transformation into a tabloid fixture and a tacky lifestyle brand. They became a kind of low-rent Posh and Becks. Just imagine the Beckhams stripped of all sophistication. The Sneijders appeared on reality TV shows and hawked knife sets and the like.

They are divorced now. Yolanthe lives in Los Angeles with their son, Xess Xava, trying to make it as an actress in Hollywood.

His second marriage also fell victim to Sneijder’s partying, which grew legendary. He spent profligately on booze and women—in addition to losing as much as 15 million euros on bad investments—which makes his playing longevity all the more remarkable. Sneijder made the most appearances for Dutch national team of all time, 134, and tallied a very healthy 31 goals for a midfielder. “That’s why I have zero regrets about everything I’ve done,” he later declared.

“I’ve already lived for someone who is 75,” he said separately.

His biographer lamented that Sneijder had no recollection whatsoever of the key moments in his career—not of winning the treble with Inter Milan or the pass that teed up Robben for a scoring chance that should have clinched the 2010 World Cup for Oranje. And that Sneijder, now 37, was incapable of introspection beyond the ways in which he had wrecked his marriages. The biographer also found him unable to focus on anything other than soccer for longer than 30 minutes. He is certain that Sneijder never read the book, even though he had given his full cooperation—in half-hour spurts.

Now, Sneijder regularly appears on Dutch TV to analyze soccer with painfully superficial commentary, openly admitting that he didn’t research the teams playing that night. But also to declare that he doesn’t plan to get the COVID vaccine. “Why would I?” was the most coherent explanation that he could muster.

Earlier this month, he was suspended for four games from the amateur team where he volunteers as an assistant coach for calling the referee a “horse dick” in Dutch.

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