Ryan Babel has explained why he is in the song Open Letter sneezes at Ibrahim Afellay. The Galatasaray attacker joined in a live stream on Instagram Kick it Net extensively on the story behind his new track, which caused a lot of controversy at the end of September because of a passage about Afellay. Babel suggests in his track that Afellay is struggling with money problems. “Heard in the corridors you’re broke, bro,” Babel raps, among other things.
In the track, Babel says he “don’t even want to start talking about men on TV,” which he finds “lame.” An image of Veronica Inside threesome Wilfred Genee, Johan Derksen and René van der Gijp appears. Immediately afterwards, he also mentions Afellay and shows a photo of the former midfielder sitting on the bench at Barcelona. “Bro I don’t know you from Barça, maybe more from PSV. Oh now you’re an analyst? Hmm so so. Heard in the corridors you’re broke bro. You say things you don’t think about that bro code anymore. But I get it if your career is dead.”
On the broadcast of Studio Football on Sunday, September 26, attention was paid to the rap of Babel. “Yes… with surprise actually”, Afellay responded when asked how he looked at the rap and especially the passage about his person. “I can only be positive about him. I have only experienced him with the Dutch national team and I know him as a very nice boy. I don’t have a single bad word for him.” Presenter Sjoerd van Ramshorst then asked whether Afellay has financial problems. Theo Janssen joked that Afellay had come to the studio with two cars; before Afellay could say anything about it herself, the topic was closed by the presenter. Before that, Janssen said that Babel has achieved a lot as a footballer for his ability. “Ryan is just a reasonable player who has had a very nice career, a bit like Dirk Kuyt. You have to respect that. But if you look at him substantively as a football player, it was not a great man.”
Marcel van Roosmalen’s ‘Short Corner’ in Studio Voetbal. ‘The world of Ryan Babel’?? pic.twitter.com/UBRr87I3k4
— NOS Football (@NOS Football) September 26, 2021
“Know who your friends used to be”
On Thursday evening, Babel spoke about his song during the livestream. The passage about Afellay could not be ignored. When asked about his relationship with Afellay, the 34-year-old attacker initially reacted with restraint. He didn’t want to get too deep into his words about Afellay, but he agreed anyway and said: “Let’s just real keep,” said Babel, who then emphasized that he has played with Afellay for years with the Dutch national team. “You are actually from the same generation. So you see such a person as your soccer mate. You share things that a lot of people don’t know. You talk about things that people don’t know. So you’re in trust with each other, you understand? And a lot of footballers who stop playing football become analysts. I don’t judge, but I’m like: just be yourself. Know where you come from, know who your colleagues were and know who your buddies used to be.”
Babel believes that Afellay should simply be able to carry out his work as an analyst. “Because you have every right to be an analyst. And there are also just football players who are currently analysts who I think are actually doing their job very well. Khalid Boulahrouz is doing very well and Hedwiges Maduro was one of my best football colleagues,” said Babel about the analysts of Ziggo Sport and ESPN respectively. “Just because they are or have been my friends, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do their job. Hedwiges Maduro has also criticized me quite often. But I think there are different ways of criticizing. Especially if you’ve been a footballer yourself. And especially if you yourself are a person who had a certain hatred towards the media. And I’m talking about Ibrahim right now.”
Babel immediately explained what he meant by that. “When he was a footballer and we were with the Dutch national team, and he had to do interviews every time, he always looked up to it and tried to get out of it every time,” Babel continued about Afellay. “You understand? You have been a football player yourself. And then now you sit down at the table, turn your tongue and take on a completely different character. Then you are simply no longer recognizable. Not just me, huh! I speak for a lot of football colleagues who still play football. Everyone looks at each other like: what happened to that man?”
Ibrahim Afellay and Ryan Babel as teammates in the Dutch Juniors at the 2005 youth World Cup
“I wasn’t supposed to explain this, because I’m already seeing new headlines about this tomorrow,” Babel said. The 69-time international emphasized that his words about Afellay did not come out of the blue. Babel said he was not happy with the way Afellay criticized him in the run-up to the recent European Championship. “Then, of course, they discussed the players who should and should not come. Listen: I don’t give a shit, I didn’t go. That’s football next time better. I’ve been around long enough to know that shit works that way. Only in this case, I was disappointed in the way he participated in the way analysts tried to ridicule me. I just found that disappointing.”
In the run-up to the European Championship, Afellay mentioned Studio Football seven attackers he would include in the pre-selection and Babel was not among them. In the end, the 69-time international actually fell by the wayside. Earlier, in 2017, Babel told de Volkskrant that he was disappointed that he was not allowed to go to the European Championship 2012 and Afellay was. “I was fit and in shape. It’s nothing personal to Ibrahim Afellay, but he had been injured for a year and was okay,” Babel looked back about four years ago. “That did not fit with the motto of national coach Bert van Marwijk. He said to me: Ryan, you have to play, otherwise I can no longer select you. That is why I went from Liverpool to TSG Hoffenheim, where I played everything. And yet I was not admitted. That was a frustration.”
Johan Derksen ‘ultimate example’
Babel indicated during the livestream on Thursday that Afellay is free to criticize him. “I’ve been criticized my entire career, it doesn’t bother me. But I care about how. If I get criticism from a celebrity like Marco van Basten and he substantiates his criticism why he thinks I shouldn’t come along, for example: hey, it’s Marco van Basten, do you understand?” Babel calls Johan Derksen the ‘ultimate example’ of people who ridicule him. “He has a platform and people are crazy enough to listen to what he is spouting. But you take that less seriously. But if you’re an ex-footballer and you’re going to play Johan Derksen, you lose it a bit. It was actually more than that.”
The ex-player of Ajax and Liverpool, among others, believes that Afellay ridiculed him rather than criticizing him. “And I didn’t think it was necessary. He’s allowed to criticize, but as an ex-colleague… We’ve been through shit together, we’ve played tournaments together, we’ve hung out in bedrooms when we stayed in, you understand? That was more,” said Babel, who finds it a pity that especially the passage about Afellay received a lot of attention in the media and not the rest of his song. Yet he also understands. “I was not surprised,” said Babel, who had anticipated that the words about Afellay would go viral. “I had already predicted that. I’m not surprised by it.”