Evert ten Napel is in his last days as a commentator. The 77-year-old Drent will provide commentary on the battle for the Johan Cruijff Scale next Saturday and then call it a day on national television, ESPN announced on Monday. Ten Napel, who has been in the business for decades and was present at several final tournaments, already stopped as a commentator at the world-famous football game FIFA in 2019.
“You have to stop once, and then the Johan Cruijff Scale is not the wrong stage for one last trick”, Ten Napel explains his farewell. “ESPN has a batch of very talented commentators, so I’m happy to pass the baton.” Ten Napel is one of the longest serving sports commentators in the Netherlands, having previously worked as a sports reporter for the NOS. On behalf of the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, he provided, among other things, the commentary during the European Championship of 1988. In 2012 he made the switch to ESPN.
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Together with Youri Mulder, Ten Napel also provided the commentary for the computer game FIFA. He did that from 2005 to 2019, before Sierd de Vos and Jeroen Grueter took over. Ten Napel was considered an old-fashioned commentator and was one of the few still working with a so-called lip microphone. Ten Napel himself once indicated that he was a ‘commentator of the people’. In addition to the European Championship in 1988, he was also present at the final of the European Championship in 1996, in which Germany was 1-2 too strong for the Czech Republic.
In addition to Ten Napel’s farewell, ESPN announces another first, as the pay station broadcasts the match between PSV and Ajax for the first time on the ESPN UHD channel. “That means a much improved picture quality. ESPN UHD broadcasts are offered in HDR, contain more colors and are transmitted at twice as many frames per second,” the explanation reads. Traditionally, the duel for the Johan Cruijff Scale is the kick-off of the new season in the Netherlands. Ten Napel is accompanied by presenter Milan van Dongen, analysts Arnold Bruggink, Kenneth Perez and Marciano Vink and reporter Pascal Kamperman.