Johan Derksen
Dutch players condemn TV pundit’s racist remark
Dutch football has long produced opinionated and narcissistic characters, but few have had as much push-back as a journeyman footballer turned TV analyst, who has united the entire Netherlands national team against him.
Johan Derksen, who wears a Beatles-style mop haircut and bushy moustache, has made a successful television career from being every bit as off colour as his closet of pastel and purple jackets.
While footballing opinions of the likes of the late Johan Cruyff, Louis van Gaal and Leo Beenhakker often have an air of pomposity about them, Derksen has made a career of damning analysis of both football and society that has caused much offence but also made him must-watch TV in the Netherlands.
The former defender for Go Ahead Eagles, Cambuur Leeuwarden, Veendam, Haarlem and MVV Maastricht became a journalist in retirement, and later the long-standing editor of the Dutch weekly Voetbal International.
In recent years Derksen has outraged with views over homosexuality, Moroccan and Turkish immigrants, and once compared a black Dutch politician to a monkey. He seemed to thrive on the headlines he caused but now is being dismissed as “mourning the past and missing out on the future” as one columnist put it. The latest controversy, which led the players of the Dutch team to announce a boycott of his show, came in the context of a wider debate over a traditional Christmas festivity that has been as quintessentially Dutch as Halloween is American.
Every December 5, the Netherlands celebrates “Sinterklaas” where St. Nicholas parades through town on a horse and his assistant “Zwarte Piet” (Black Pete) hands out sweets.
It marks the start of the gift-giving season but the debate over the racist nature of the Black Pete character, dressed in16th century jester-style costume and with face painted black, has gathered much momentum in recent years and polarised the Dutch.
It was in this context that Derksen delivered a barb at Dutch rapper Akwasi, who is of African origin and was a strident figure at June’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Amsterdam.
The panel were discussing how ridiculous it was that a demonstrator had come dressed as Zwarte Piet, when Derksen said: “Are you sure that’s not Akwasi?”
He seemed amused by his own attempt at humour but it fell largely flat in the studio and had a massively negative reaction after.
“This is just football canteen talk? This is just an opinion?” read a joint statement by national skipper Virgil van Dijk posted on his Twitter account to announce a boycott by Dutch internationals of the show. “No! This is way over the line. Not for the first time. Not for the second time. Time and time again. Enough is enough.”
National coach Ronald Koeman said he supported the players, while advertisers came under immediate fire and began to withdraw support.
But Derksen refused to say sorry. “I do not regret this joke at all, although it was a wrong joke. It arose spontaneously at the table,” he said a week later as the audience increased in anticipation of an apology that never came.
The last show of the season was cancelled as the panellists turned on each other amid the media storm. Whether it returns for the new season in mid-September will be as hotly debated as the action on the pitch.