In the program Leaders Familiar faces from national football journalism tell Voetbalzone about their work and career. Using interesting anecdotes, they give a glimpse into the media world full of press rooms, channel bosses and tight deadlines. In the fifth episode, sports commentator Sierd de Vos slides from Ziggo Sport to Justus Dingemanse in Hofman Utrecht. In the broadcast, he elaborates on his love for Atlético Madrid, the criticism he has to endure, his work for FIFA 21 and the reason why he has started sharing restaurant tips.
Headpieces can be seen on YouTube and listened to as a podcast via Spotify and Apple Podcasts!
By Justus Dingemanse & Thijs Verhaar
The corners of the commenter’s mouth curl up slowly. Every now and then he shows recognition with a nod. Sierd de Vos watches a video in which passers-by are asked what they know about him. The group of respondents quickly divides into two distinct groups located on opposite sides of a spectrum: either love him or hate him. The themes of travel tips and nice anecdotes also invariably come up and a man tells how he went to the Feria in Seville with friends because he El Sierd heard about it so enthusiastically. “That is a party week. A kind of Queen’s Day, but for a week, ”explains the commentator. “Our own king has apparently also heard my story, because he also went to the Feria in 2000 or 2001 and met our queen Máxima there.”
It is just one of the many anecdotes that the 61-year-old commentator can shake up his sleeve. He has been in the business for over forty years and has seen his field of work change drastically over the years. Where he used to travel all over the world to report on matches, nowadays he usually tells his stories from a studio. “We broadcast so many big matches. Then it just isn’t payable to go everywhere. It quickly costs 8,000 or 9,000 euros per match. ” He mentions travel costs, satellite costs and comment post costs as examples to keep in mind. “And then do that amount times thirty matches a week. That cannot be done. ”
Sierd de Vos in his younger years with Ronald Koeman at Ajax
The overcrowded match schedule has also been an obstacle, he says with a look back to 2003: “I first played a PSV game in the early afternoon and then immediately drove to Rotterdam, where De Klassieker was played.” Due to the heavy traffic, however, he missed the first part of that game: “I arrived just too late and had an interview with Rafael van der Vaart afterwards. He then made that fabulous goal with the heel, in the right corner. But I hadn’t seen that! I asked him if he thought he had played well. He looked at me funny and asked, “Didn’t you see that then?” So that combination of two games in one afternoon turned out not to be possible. ”
The main reason for taking a different approach to his work came in 2010, when the care of his now 15-year-old son Kyrill fell completely on his shoulders and he became a single father. “As a result, I had to cancel a lot. At the time, I was asked for the European Championship in 2012, could go to a major cycling race in Colombia and so on. But none of that was possible anymore. I had a son at home who had breakfast with me every day, went to school and then came back. ” The moment coincided with the economic crisis, as a result of which his employer asked him to do competitions from the studio. “That suited me well, because I couldn’t go away for long anyway. And I had been in the stadiums for so long that I could easily tell that you have a restaurant to the right of a stadium called this and that, with a waiter named Joseba and the best food there. ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TMGX4f9hc
This unconventional way of covering matches turned out to be a hit and his animated commentary regularly impresses viewers that he is actually in the stadium. This is also because he prepares for hours to perfection for each duel: “Even after forty years. You can make a career in this profession in two ways: you can imitate something very well what someone else does – most do – or you can say: ‘I’m doing it completely differently.’ ”De Vos places himself in the latter category. “The trick is to depict with the camera. Making a piece, as Mart Smeets always says. That is the best thing there is to me. You have knowledge and you make a piece about it. ” His tips from ‘the culture committee of Ziggo Sport‘are now in great demand and every week he receives many requests via social media from people who are going away for a weekend to, for example, Barcelona, Valencia or Seville.
Since the summer of 2019, his characteristic voice can also be heard in the popular football game FIFA from EA Sports, for which he provides the commentary together with Jeroen Grueter. “That demands a lot from a reporter, because every match is spectacular in FIFA. Or at least that’s how it should appear ”, he explains. “So you are constantly at an energy level of 80 or 85 percent. And with huge goals you go to 100 percent. You must therefore pronounce all names in the game at three energy levels. I think we needed 98 days to record everything together. ” In his own words, replacing a commentary duo costs 1.4 million euros, so De Vos seems at least assured of work for the time being. At the moment he is already busy recording the new edition.
Sierd de Vos from his commentary position in the studio
With the characteristic statements such as ‘Cuckoo!’, ‘Ratatata!’ and ‘BOOM!’ he has made his own mark on the game that is also popular with his own son: “Yes, he plays every day. Unfortunately for hours. If he would spend just as much time on his school, he would have finished high school long ago. ” Kyrill’s hobby also ensures that he is regularly confronted with himself: “Turn Daddy down a bit, I shout when I hear myself from his room again.” These are things he will happily remember after his retirement. “In my career I have also made a few very nice films and I like to watch them back. Our profession is not about the reporter, but about the sport: the heroes. We can only bring to the surface stories that you wouldn’t hear otherwise. “
As an example, De Vos cites an anecdote about Rinus Israël: “He once said to Johan Cruijff that he would kick his knees off if he got into the sixteen that day. I find it fascinating to be able to tell about things that happen on the field and in the locker room that you would otherwise never hear or see. ” The love for the game was there early on. Sunday evening seven o’clock Studio Sport and on Mondays the sports section of The Telegraph were fixed rituals. “It was not brought up at home, but I had all the football yearbooks Samson. All players were still there with their address details. That would be unimaginable now, wouldn’t it? ” Nowadays anyone with a computer at home can look up all kinds of facts, but according to him the strength lies in something else: “The point is that you remember that one special event and look for the story behind it.”
Sierd de Vos as a reporter for VI Oranje during the 2014 World Cup.
Icons such as Kees Jansma, Theo Reitsma, Mart Smeets and the late Spaniard Andrés Montes see De Vos as his examples. He now thinks Wytse van der Goot is very good, but there is also a large proportion of contemporary commentators who do not like him: “There are too many reporters in the Netherlands who only say what you see. They think we are all visually impaired. Why would you as a television commentator say: ‘On the pole!’, We see that, right? You even hear it: Talk! ” According to him, the reason for this is often motivated by laziness: “Because they don’t know what to say other than that. I know from the keeper of De Graafschap that he has a sister who is an amateur model on motorcycle magazines in her bikini. Those are things you want to hear, right? We see that ball on the post ourselves. ”
It is De Vos all over. Straightforward and not afraid to offend someone else. He stood out from an early age as an intern at the ANP by asking questions about dirty money to a KNVB official and later received a heavy blow from Eric Gerets. The Belgian former coach of PSV was caught in his time as a player due to a bribery scandal and De Vos later decided to ask him before a crucial international match against Belgium for how much money he was prepared to lose this time. “He didn’t like that,” the reporter smiles years later. In the meantime, the two can easily go through a door, something that probably cannot be said about his relationship with Dries Roelvink. “As a commentator you have to be careful not to repeat yourself, so you have to use different metaphors all the time. Then I once said that a goal was just as beautiful as it was stupid how Roelvink’s son behaved. Anyway, if your father is a loser, you are often yourself too. ”
The singer was not charmed by these statements and announced that he was considering legal action, but did not pursue those plans. De Vos himself did report it two years later when a rapping hairdresser publicly wondered Who stabs Sierd to death?: “He didn’t rap for a while.” In 2019 it was again hit: “I thought I was making a nice joke when many Greeks were naked in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. I made a connection between the billion dollar support to Greece and the fact that they were not wearing clothes. That was not taken innocently by the chairman; coincidentally the same man who later entered the field with a gun during a Greek top match. That man had to go home to explain why his team was canceled again in Europe and he needed a lightning rod. He did not understand that Ziggo was on Ajax’s shirt, but also broadcast the match. It became a mishmash of it all being corrupt and he promised to set my house on fire. ”
Sierd de Vos interviews former Ajax coach Frank de Boer for Sport1
In his own words, this specific incident did not leave him in the cold clothes, but otherwise it leaves the dyed sports journalist rather cold when he is again verbally attacked for his striking statements. “You quickly get up at trending topics Twitter if 3,000 amateur philosophers think something of a comment. ” Not infrequently, this has to do with his preference for Atlético Madrid, of which he is an official member, just like Olympique Marseille and NAC Breda. The fact that he is a socio has been interpreted by some of the fans of arch-rival Real Madrid as an antipathy to their club. Something that he himself strongly disputes: “I happen to be a member of another club, but that does not mean that I cannot tell objectively about Real. The only thing is that they have been playing very businesslike for three years. Not spectacular, otherwise I would also react more exuberantly. Last season they deservedly became champions, but after the corona stop they won almost everything with one goal difference. ”
Yet it remains for many Madridistas wring that De Vos does come across as enthusiastic at matches of that other Spanish top club: Barcelona. The commentator even hopes to have his latest interview with Lionel Messi. “I have sometimes spoken to him shortly after competitions, but never really a long conversation. How great would it be if we could still do that when we said goodbye to both of us! ” He then closes the nearly three-hour conversation with a quote from the seventeenth-century physicist Blaise Pascal: “The heart has reasons that the mind does not know.” The motto typifies the love of the Madrid people for Atlético: “If you live in Madrid, you should really be for Real. Because of the size of the club and their many awards. But most Madrid residents are for Atlético. Because the heart has reasons that the mind does not know. ”
Headpieces can be seen on YouTube and listened to as a podcast via Spotify and Apple Podcasts!