The lights attack

Why the Netherlands team is the most fun team of euro

Throw the perfect green lawn by the handful of living orange lights and see how they rush, overtaking one another, scatter, run away, sharply shoot in different directions and form complex figures and fluid forms, the name of which will be thought of even the most noble geometer. This is the Netherlands team on Euro 2021.

Orange lights on the green field live their own life, everyone has their own speed and their clever maneuver, but all together they are connected into a single whole, as if invisible threads or as if somewhere nearby, also invisible, hangs in the air of the supermoza, leading orange lights in their races, pro-tubes, trapezers and pulsating triangles and pulsating circles.

There is a temptation to give this supermodation the name of the coach Frank de Bura, but this is definitely not him.

De But is not the creator of the universe of the orange lights, he is only her user and assistant. He inherited him from Dutch navigators, from the Gezes, from Amsterdam hippies, and he protects her. You can try to write the story of an orange game, withdrawing it from the history of Holland, as well as Michels and Kruyf, but even the most interesting story will not explain the present in its length, width and height. After all, they do it now, this very minute. And those who do this are training so much that they are unlikely to have enough time to study the past game. Their game is born today, occurs at seven or nine in the evening in one of the European cities, and it has something momentary, living and natural, as in the radiance of fireflies or a flight of sparks.

The orange company, having fun crumbling around the field, includes Memphis Depai, who hated his last name and therefore just Memphis, who came to training on his own Rolls-Royce, a high de Ligt, forgetting in the post-match interview, which club he plays for, who went from England to play in Spain, but joined France (“He walked along In the room, I got into another ”), the Spartakian Promes, who is under trial for causing a knife wound to his beloved relative, Dumfries, who began his journey in the ARUBA island (189th place in the FIFA ranking), playing with a cardiac defibrille sewn in the chest, which would take the first place in the competition of doubles of the hallite and about which The fans argue, he is the son of Gullita or grandson.

This is the most fun team in the euro. Or maybe in all world football. The fun is not in laughter or smiles (they laugh and smile no more than others), but in the game. They have fun to play. They have fun of their continuous scattering to the sides, fun to break at full speed along one edge, knowing that at the other at that time, obeying the internal law of their game, at the same speed or even faster three or four rush forward, anticipating the attack as a flight and meeting with the ball like a buzz. Behind the movement of orange lights, it is interesting to watch as an amazing form of life.

And if you observe this for a long time, you will notice that some lights have a feature of grouping and constantly performing joint actions. Their name is de Jong, Weinaldum and Depay, but they themselves prefer to call them Frenci, Giovanni and Memphis. This trinity seems to have grown in one incubator - they feel each other after 50 meters of space and can anticipate that one of them will do in five seconds and where it will be in ten. And when you have already completely delved into a cheerful Dutch game, you begin to feel that these three form something like the core of the orange movement, its core. They either twist the game like a top, then build it with a small pass, according to the pebble and on the ground. Their constructive role does not prevent them from being artists. Franks are smaller, and Giovanni and Memphis are more in stroke with children's excitement, completely not afraid to lose the ball, with a strange frivolity and pleasure in modern football.

It didn’t work out - well, nothing, now we will take the ball and try again.

It would be good to play with this trinity in the courtyard where I grew up, playing five hours a day. In that court, there were also people who, as they said then, were “found” with enthusiasm and class. Such an honor - to invite you to play in the courtyard of your childhood - do not provide everyone, but only chosen ones. Ibrahimovich, for example, has nothing to do there: firstly, he bammed that he is not valued in the yard, and secondly, he is so large that he simply does not fit on the asphalt field, which has 30 steps in length and the side of the sidewalk instead of the edge. Bale, with his powerful blow, in that court will be difficult to fall into the small gate, whose rods are marked with bricks. But Franca, Giovanni and Memphis there are quite represented and acceptable.

There are three of them, the correct number. This is a team. We played three there for three, and since many triples were gaining on Sundays from all the surrounding courtyards, we played right through. What a delight is - to beat on a patch, take a ricochet from the sidewalk and put the ball into the brick with a soft touch of the “cheek”. Come, Frenki, Giovanni and Memphis, in that time, which has long drowned in time, the Moscow mythical courtyard with a red-blue, rubber, heart-rendingly jumping ball and rod bars-there are several guys in sweaters, sneakers and with their knees, and these guys will not look at you from the bottom up. They will show you a couple of finites that you do not know.