Football fans come in all shapes and sizes. One only follows the results of his club via Teletext, the other is present at both home and away games. But some fans are even so fanatical that they have their club love immortalized on their body, in the form of a tattoo. Examples of this are Feyenoord supporters Lesley Verhagen, Stephanie Oldejans, Youri van den Berg and Frans Oldejans. They speak in the latest episode of Football crazya series of Football zone in collaboration with Bart Grimbergen.
All four have a different tattoo that shows their love for Feyenoord. And they all have a different reason why Feyenoord means so much to them. For Verhagen it started at a young age. He was five or six years old when he first visited De Kuip. “It makes a gigantic impression, when you, as a little boy, go along with your father and with your grandfather, and you enter such a gigantic stronghold,” he remembers. “I immediately fell in love with the stadium and the club. It has been poured into you from an early age. Many babies sing ‘Sleep, baby, sleep’, but the majority of Feyenoord supporters just the ‘Hand in hand’ is sung over the cradle.”
Verhagen only went to De Kuip with his father-in-law in the last few years. “But unfortunately he passed away last April,” said the fanatical Feyenoord fan, who, in addition to various Feyenoord tattoos, also had his father-in-law’s initials immortalized on his body. Youri van den Berg also associates Feyenoord with someone who was close to him. “From the age of five or six I went to the stadium. With my father. He died when I was seventeen. The only times I was actually with him was at Feyenoord. Then we were just the two of us. If I when I think of Feyenoord, I think of my father. And vice versa.”
The love that Stephanie Oldejans has for Feyenoord goes very far, she says. “If someone says something bad about Feyenoord, I can get angry. Or they have lost, especially that 020, then I’m just sick. Then you don’t have to come near me, then you have to stay away. That could really take two or three days.”
For Frans Oldejans it is not only the love for Feyenoord that runs deep, but also the love for Rotterdam. He therefore also has a tattoo of the skyline of Rotterdam. “Rotterdam is my city,” he says. The best game he experienced as a Feyenoord fan was already 21 years ago: when Feyenoord won 3-2 at home against Borussia Dortmund and captured the UEFA Cup. “It was a very charged match, because Rotterdam was in mourning (because of the death of Pim Fortuin, ed.). But then getting that victory, sending those Germans home on the A16, towards Germany… I felt euphoric. It’s such a good feeling… European success is almost as good as cumming. Almost.”