‘Absolutely amazing’: Dutch fans watch Netherlands soccer team practice in KC
A sea of orange blanketed the stands of Riverside Stadium, a performance center for Kansas City’s National Women’s Soccer League team (and KC Current II), as hundreds of fans attended a community training session to watch the Netherlands national soccer team prepare for the World Cup on Wednesday morning.
The Current hosted the event, and tickets were made available to season-ticket holders, Current Club and Teal Rising Alliance members, and Riverside residents.
Fans watched as the team split into groups to conduct drills and cheered them on as the outfielders played footvolley, a combination of soccer and volleyball, until a winner was crowned.
When practice concluded, the Dutch team walked over to the bleachers to applaud and thank the fans for their support before taking photos and signing autographs. Fans swarmed to the front gate of the bleachers to get a closer look at Netherlands captain and star center back Virgil van Dijk.
One of those fans was Kansas City local Clair Matier, who arrived at Riverside Stadium wearing a Celtic F.C. jersey, representing the Scottish team that Van Dijk was a part of from 2013 to 2015.
The Dutch defender won three Scottish Premier League titles with Celtic before moving to English club Southampton. He later joined his current club, Liverpool, where he has established himself as one of the best center backs in the world.
“I had no choice but to be a soccer fan. It’s how my dad raised me. It’s pretty much the only sport I watched growing up,” she said. “Soccer’s always been a huge part of my life. The fact that the World Cup is here is awesome.”
Despite not completing her goal of getting Van Dijk to sign her jersey, Matier still plans to take full advantage of the World Cup festivities that Kansas City has to offer.
“I’ll be at the round-of-32 match and the fan fest,” she said. “I will try to be outside watching as many games as possible and just soak up how cool the city’s going to be.
A group that plans to bring the culture of the Netherlands to the World Cup festivities is the Kansas City Dutch Club, a band of Dutch Americans, their spouses, and expats. The club was established in the 1960s and has steadily grown to about 100 members.
Patrick Bakker, the club’s president, says COVID-19 put a dent in the club’s growth, but the World Cup coming to Kansas City has rejuvenated the group.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” Bakker said, asked about the Netherlands being in Kansas City. “We never would have dreamt that, first of all, we’d get a World Cup here, and then your Dutch team plays here, and then it’s also stationed here as well. Never in my wildest dreams.”
Now that his dreams are a reality, Bakker expects the Netherlands to be one of the strongest teams in the tournament — even stronger than the team that took Argentina, the eventual 2022 World Cup champions, to penalty kicks.
“It was a coin toss as to who was going to win the game,” Bakker recalls. “And it tells you the level of our team has not gone down. We’re a better team right now. I think we have a lot of opportunity and a good chance to win this. I’m Dutch, so I’ll always say we’re going to be world champions.”