OFI: The Dutch of the Cretans live an … adventure in Greece
The Dutch of OFI spoke to their compatriots about their Greek… experience and what impresses them.
A Dutch community has been created at OFI, as Boy Waterman, Jonathan De Guzman, Mike Van Dyenen and Luke Kastanios compete together. The four Dutch talked about football in Greece, but also their life in Crete, in the Dutch magazine “elfvoetbal” that traveled to Crete to meet them.
“We all watch football matches together. “Boy invited us to his house to see Ajax-Eindhoven,” de Guzman said, adding that Castanios was joking: Gathering at Boy’s house is the easiest. He has the biggest house and his wife and son are here. I live close to the children. “Jonathan is close to Mike, we can all be together in 20 minutes.”
De Guzman noted: “We usually eat together. We meet three other Dutchmen who play in Ergotelis (Neral, Konrad, Api). These guys are alone here and do not arrange enough for their team for them. It’s school to plan some things. The programs here are announced late, not only by the teams, but by the competent football authorities. We gave a game yesterday that was scheduled to be given a week later (this means with Atromitos). Five days earlier we heard that the match will take place earlier. The administration said that we should go to Athens for five days, everyone’s schedule came upside down “.
Waterman, for his part, said: “There is a different world in the organization between Greece and the Netherlands. After two years in Turkey and five in Cyprus, I’m used to it. I can understand Mike having more difficulty with that. His previous experience outside the Netherlands was in Germany where everything is perfectly planned. It has now entered a new football culture. When we went on holiday last summer we never knew the league would start. Today we do not know where we will train tomorrow, yesterday we did not know where training will take place today (this is one of the projects that take place at BAK) “.
The experienced OFI keeper added: “In the beginning, this uncertainty ate me. I am someone who gives a lot of value to infrastructure. Now I know this will not change. I try not to deal with it anymore. Life here is too good to be true. When my contract with APOEL expired I could stay in Cyprus but I did not want to go from the best and biggest team in the country to a smaller club. My return to the Netherlands was not my choice. I have not been back for 10 years and that was difficult for me due to my age. I knew the OFI assistant coach and my manager Jan de Visser, like Giorgos Samaras, had played in Heerenveen, and they knew each other. That’s how it all started. “
However, De Guzman stated that he was still watching Feyenoord’s games and that one day he wanted to return there.