My dear friends, I took a bit of a breather after the dismal Euros and switching blogs and the intense competitions in England and Holland….

I’m feeding some nice background info into the blog on our prospects in Orange, waiting for the new season to kick off…

Tomorrow, Louis van Gaal officially starts his new role and he has already announced a new dimension to national team management: using computer-analysis, he will analyse the sleeping patterns of our internationals!!

“I have learned that you can get a lot from the sleeping patterns of athletes. They work with this is many other sports. I want our internationals to understand that this is not to check them but more to help them get a better understanding of their physiology.”

Is this the first step towards another debacle?? I hope not…

Tomorrow, Mr Van Gaal will announce his squad for the Belgium friendly, by the way…

We will go on here with reporting on the remaining youth teams of Oranje in the coming days and while we are doing so, I realised that for Feyenoord fans (like me) the season has actually started already :-).

Dutch fans on their way to Brussels already…

Feyenoord played it’s first leg game in Kiev, to qualify for the Champions League.

Dynamo Kiev injected 20 Mio euros in their team, while Feyenoord was only able to invest 300,000 euros. So 20M vs 0,3M.

And where Feyenoord lost mainstays like Ron Vlaar (Aston Villa), El Ahmadi (Aston Villa), Guidetti (back to Man City) and Otman Bakkal ( Moscow) the Club from Rotterdam was able to compete nicely for half a game. Feyenoord even scored the opener and had to allow the equaliser only after a Erwin Mulder mistake in goal (who actually was Man of the Match for Feyenoord). Dynamo Kiev scored the winner in the 70st minute and had opportunities to make it 3-1 and 4-1 but the crossbar and Mulder stopped that.

Ronald Koeman: “I’m happy we still have a home game. Despite the loss, I’m pretty satisfied with the way we played. It’s so early in the season, next week we will be even stronger and fitter, playing in normal circumstances at home.” (it was close to 40 degrees in Kiev)

Cool banner

Now, the reference to the title:

I think it would be awesome to hear your stories about Oranje. Wonderful memories, stories about how you got to love the boys in Orange, essays on victories or more likely, heartfelt loss…. There is probably a gem in each and everyone of you.

I will collate the great ones (all of them in other words) and publish them here in the months to come!!

Please, take up the challenge and grab your creative writing pen and do it!

So please, send your stories to:

netherlandsworldcupblog@gmail.com

Don’t hold back. Write about your “hook”, your connection to the Dutch national team. Your dreams, hopes, memories, fave players, whatever….

Stay tuned here for more, with Louis’ first squad selection up here soon!!

My new car… A Dutch Spyker…