Here it is, my field of dreams, a green space between the apartments on Leopoldstraat and Johan de Meesterstraat. From being the smallest of small boys, this was my football pitch, where I bestrode the footballing world, if only in my imagination, like a colossus. This was my De Kuip, my Feyenoord Stadion in Rotterdam.
The boys came from all around Leopoldstraat and met every summer’s evening for the big match. Many would whistle or shout out names and they would gather as the biggest boys picked the teams, including the overseas player, me.
The boys grew old with me so I was among the youngest every year. I could not compete with the pace, power or technique so I would be the resident goal-hanger, trying to finish off any loose ball that might come my way.
If it was sunny and warm and if it was damp and cold, no one ever missed a game and certainly not me. Some even became friends, including brothers Gerhard and Jackie. Actually, more than friends in the case of these two: heroes.
They weren’t the biggest or the oldest but they were the best, gliding across the ground as if walking on air. It was total football before total football had even been invented.
Some people even came out onto their verandahs to watch us play and sometimes dodge a wildly hit clearance. The games would go on until nightfall when the little lampposts could no longer carry out their role as ersatz floodlights.
I can remember scoring one particular goal, right at the end of a particularly close and competitive game, mis-kicked into the wall at one end (we had coats at the other) from a distance of at least a yard and just for that fleeting moment I was a star in the eyes of my Dutch friends. Then, the hubbub slowly died down and the boys went off in their different directions. Game over until tomorrow.
I lost contact with the Dutch boys in my early teenage years and I never got to know what happened to Gerhard and Jackie or any of the others whose names I have long forgotten but whose faces I can still see, unchanged by the passing of time. On my field of dreams.
