The Football Tragic

In the two years after Willy Brokamp left, MVV Maastricht suffered a slump. Relegated from the Eredivisie, they were battling away somewhat unconvincingly in the second division when their old hero returned to the club in 1976.

Brokamp was, in short, somewhat unimpressed by the quality of the football on offer. In typical style, he demonstrated his disappointment in a number of idiosyncratic ways. During one particularly depressing MVV performance, he decided to play with his shirt pulled over his head, goal-celebration style, as if to avert his eyes from the mediocre quality of play. In another match, he registered his displeasure at receiving virtually no service during the first half by having the traditional post-game shower...at half-time.

He too, however, was not the force he once was. A former clubmate recalled that Brokamp didn't go through the usual pre-game warm-up, because otherwise he would run out of puff during the match. Still, he managed a very decent goalscoring record during his second stint at MVV, as usual. After a couple of perhaps less-than-committed years, he threw himself into his real love - the hospitality business. With everything that the word "hospitality" implied. And he made a great success of it, managing several establishments and becoming well-known in the region as an entrepreneur of sorts. 

Football? Brokamp still watched the game, but lamented that modern players had become a little too "robotic", and regretted that kids no longer learned the game on the streets, with all the playfulness and improvisation that implied. Johan Cruyff, interestingly enough, expressed similar sentiments before he passed away. Brokamp did eventually produce the inevitable ex-footballer's book, but rather than the ponderous ghostwritten humble-bragging which tends to be the order of the day, he filled a book with funny anecdotes from his playing days - the sort of stories, in other words, that he would have regaled friends with over a coffee or a beer.

In 2017, the main Limburg TV station caught up with Brokamp at one of his establishments, to commemorate his acquisition of the Aux Pays-Bas in 1973. No longer sporting his trademark blond hair, the mellow veteran reflected happily on his playing days and beyond. "Football was never an aim in itself for me. It was just part of a great life."

"I don't drink too much [any more]. I am someone who in the morning likes to have a coffee and read the paper, and go out for dinner at night. I don’t come as often to the café now, I just turned 71. But I do like spending time here, a bit of socialising, chatting with people. I'm someone who likes socialising."

To this day, the story of Brokamp getting to manage a café as the price for his remaining with Maastricht is a perennial favourite in the region. "A café as part of your contract - what sort of player would get away with that?" asked the Limburg TV reporter rhetorically. "Yes, that's right - Willy Brokamp."

# posted by Mike Salter @ 4:11 PM