For those reading the United States – yes, I’ve gotten used to the convention of calling soccer football.
Recently I was in the Albert Heijn and I spotted some Pringles cans in the chips aisle:
The Dutch football season was canceled earlier this week after the Dutch government said that large events would not be allowed before 1 September at the earliest. Even so, the Pringoooals promotion is still going on, at least in some countries (Dutch link).
The Dutch football association was left with a puzzle after deciding to cancel the remainder of the football season. They let the affected clubs vote, but of course not everyone is happy and there is talk of lawsuits. The FA has decided the following (see also DutchNews.nl):
- officially there is no champion (Ajax and AZ were #1 and #2)
- Ajax will go straight into the European Champions League‘s group stage, while AZ will need to qualify
- Feyenoord will go straight into the Europa League (one level below the Champions League), while PSV Eindhoven and Willem II will need to qualify
- FC Utrecht (which barely missed out) wants to sue
- Most leagues have relegations and promotions at the end of the season. For Dutch football this means the two worst teams in the Dutch honor league play the two best teams from the Dutch first league. If a team from the lower league wins this knockout game then they are promoted to the honor division and the losing team is relegated to the first division.
- The FA decided that there would be no promotions or degradations this season
- At the moment that competition was stopped, The Hague’s ADO Den Haag team was second to last in the honor division… though anything could have changed in the months ahead. But they got lucky, even if the team itself sees financial trouble ahead due to the coronavirus crisis (Dutch article from omroepwest.nl)
- The two teams from the lower division want to sue
Although various teams are unhappy, the chances of winning in court are quite low (Dutch article from nos.nl).
I’ll admit I am definitely missing sports on TV. I wasn’t always a big football fan, but sometimes it provides the perfect amount of entertainment or background noise. And since Marco and I have Ziggo, we have seen a lot of English Premier League games over the years.
Life in the Hague 