Guus Hiddink will be put in the spotlight this weekend around the derby between Valencia and Levante for an action from thirty years ago. The former coach of the home team had a Nazi flag removed in February 1992 at the Mestalla branch prior to the duel with Albacete. The city council of Valencia has not forgotten that and has invited Hiddink to visit the Plaza del Ayuntamiento.
“I immediately said ‘yes'”, Hiddink tells the General Newspaper† “It’s not about me. It’s about us all staying alert. There are things that you should never tolerate as a society. That’s how I saw it then. And that’s how I still see it.” The 75-year-old coach can still vividly recall the 1992 incident. “Out of the corner of my eye I saw that there was a flag there. Red, with a large swastika in the white center, unmistakably the flag of Nazi Germany. I went to our team manager and said: have an attendant remove that flag. I also shouted : otherwise I won’t go on the field!”‘, Hiddink recalls.
Afterwards, it is not about Valencia’s 1-1 draw, but about the removal of the flag, criticized by Hiddink. The then chairman Arturo Tuzon is furious about the action of the Dutch coach. “He was still furious. ‘What are you interfering with? You should only think about football’. Those kinds of texts came to my head. He was a very conservative man. ‘Still, we should not close our eyes to this chairman’ , was my reaction. I will in any case take sides and disapprove of this,” said Hiddink.
Hiddink received compliments for his intervention at the time, but threats also came in. “I did not think about consequences at the time,” admits the current technical director of Curaçao. “I didn’t want to be passive. It was young people who put up those flags. They probably didn’t all realize what it does to other people to see those symbols. But still… And threats, yes, there were yes. But luckily that stayed small. It never became physically threatening.”
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