When sadness struck Oranje

Maarten Wijffels/Chris van Nijnatten
Wednesday 24 December 2008

The Netherlands played two fantastic games during the group stages of Euro 2008 and were big favorites to claim the title, but in-between the last group game and the quarter final encounter with Guus Hiddink's Russia sadness struck.

A review.

There are football reasons why Holland exited the tournament against Russia and there was the Boulahrouz tragedy, something you do not find in any coaches manual.

In the Beau-Rivage Palace hotel in Lausanne Dirk Kuyt, Arjen Robben and André Ooijer play a game 'Settlers of Catan'.

I, Kuyt's room the TV is on and shows the game Sweden-Russia.

In the five-star-hotel at Lake Geneva the players watch the game in several small groups.

It's Wednesday, 18 June, 20h52.

The door to Kuyt's room is - as always - open and just when Robben wants to start a new city team manager Hans Jorritsma enters the room.

'Something has happened' he says with a worried face.

All are shocked when they hear the news that newly born Anissa Boulahrouz has died.

What was a 'complicated pregnancy' earlier in the day has become a personal tragedy.

The players, three young fathers, fall off their pink cloud.

They have won all three previous games, World Champions Italy and runners-up France have been brushed aside and even the B-team had no trouble at all against Rumania.

This could be their tournament, such was the feeling of the settlers.

They pack away the game and switch off the TV.

What to do now?

"I thought he we had to watch at least the end of the first half," Marco van Basten says six months later.

The Holland boss had planned that this would be the night where the squad would make the switch.

Sweden-Russia was set at the perfect moment amidst all the euphoria and one of the two teams would be the next opponent.

Van Basten: "At first I thought it to be a bit sudden to go to the hospital immediately, but they indicated with some urgency that it was important we would come."

At that time press secretary Kees Jansma and captain Edwin van der Sar is already underway.

Ruud van Nistelrooy has been informed by Jorritsma and wants to go as well.

"So we turned around o go and get them," Jansma remembers.

In the hospital in Lausanne they find the Boulahrouz family and also Robin van Persie and Nigel de Jong.

The two players had gone to the hospital in the afternoon together with Ibrahim Afellay to support Khalid Boulahrouz and his wife Sabia.

Their daughter - born 3 months early - lived an hour and a half.

At half-time Van Basten arrives in a taxi.

Jansma: "We saw the family Boulahrouz and the baby. They very much wanted to share their grief with us. All football was gone. In the hall Ruud and Edwin were waiting. Members of the hospital's personnel were taking pictures with their mobile phones and under normal circumstances the players don't mind at all. But now it made the whole situation very strange. That were not two football players sitting there."

A few miles down the road in the hotel Sweden-Russia does not matter any longer.

Besides Boulahrouz there are only four players in the squad who do not have children yet.

Van der Vaart and Kuyt before escaped similar tragedies by a whisker.

Their wives, based in two other hotels are called.

"You want to share something like that immediately," Kuyt says.

"The whole squad was down. One moment you were on cloud 9 after a fantastic start to the tournament and the next you are knocked back back down to earth."

Six months later Khalid Boulahrouz still finds it hard to talk about the day that Anissa - a name that means friendliness - was born and died.

He remembers very little anyway.

A haze hangs over all his memories of that time.

"I am still in the middle of processing the emotions. It may take one or two years to see things clear. That's how long it took before I could talk about the death of my father."

It all started during the training in the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise that Wednesday.

Boulahrouz had to rush to the hospital.

He was allowed to travel in a police car and that was seen by a journalist.

It triggered a stream of articles on lost of international websites and there was much speculation about possible drug use of the 26-year-old defender.

Press secretary Jansma: "To protect the family I kept my mouth shut for a few hours but at a certain point I called a couple of journalists and told them it all had to do with his child."

Boulahrouz is the only player not to return to the hotel that night.

He arrives the next day when Holland train at 11 AM.

Van Basten will have to decide whether or not to continue the tournament for the defender.

It would be the second time he is sent home as he also did not make the cut before the tournament but returned after Ryan Babel got injured.

Van Basten discusses the matter with his staff.

His first thought is that nothing can disturb the focus of the players, but in the end it he goes by what Boulahrouz tells him.

Van Basten: "What do you want? I asked him. Khalid immediately indicated that he wanted to continue the tournament and that he wanted to play against Russia. He thought he was capable to give his grief a place. He was very determined. I did tell him that he would have to communicate it to the group himself or else they might think that we decided it for him."

When he walks onto the training ground fifteen minutes later he addresses his team mates.

"There was no one but the players and there was no wind so all you heard was him talking," Dirk Kuyt says.

"What stuck with me is that he said he wanted no compassion form the players. It was the first thing he said. Despite all the pain and sadness he wanted to be treated normally. He wanted to finish the mission we had embarked on in May."

Kees Jansma: "In hindsight there are all sorts of smart theories - that I do understand - that say he should have been sent home immediately. But apart from the fact that he didn't want it, the important players in the group. Van der Sar and Van Nistelrooy absolutely wanted Khalid to stay. This was the first major setback for a squad that had been euphoric. They didn't want to let each other down a time like this. They refused to be separated."

Within the squad a natural process is started ahead of the game against Russia.

When Boulahrouz wants to continue he is treated like any other player.

And of course the rest of the squad sense that there's no point in 22 players being all over him.

De Jong, Van Persie and Afellay, the players who were closest to Boulahrouz will support him whenever necessary.

"I have tried to do what I could," Afellay says.

"Just by being there, because what can you say?"

Van Basten: "In my experience nothing changed football-wise in the days after. We had already decided about the starting lineup against Russia. And as Boulahrouz still trained well we didn't see the need to change anything. I just kept a close watch on how he was doing by observing him and asking him a question from time to time."

One thing still ha to be discussed: what will they do on match day?

A minute of silence? Black armbands?

Jansma: "The family thought that perhaps a minute of silence would be appropriate. It was a cautious thought and they abandoned it quickly. It would have too much impact on the game."

Wearing armbands was embraced by the players.

Led by Van der Sar and Van Nistelrooy the players saw it as a suitable way to show they shared the grief of their team mate.

Hans Jorritsma fetched the bands from the team luggage.

"You hope you'll never need them; but they are standard equipment for the Dutch national team."

The encounter with Hiddink's team rushes closer.

The team travel from Lausanne to Basel on Friday where they train one last time in the evening.

Literally in the last second of training Arjen Robben injured his groin.

The only player with depth will not make it to the Russia game and that is a big blow to Van Basten's battle plan.

Hiddink has analyzed Oranje to the bone.

As coach of the opponent he makes use of the euphoria.

Just how big it is he can tell from his cell phone.

Even Hiddink receives text messages with congratulations after Holland beat France 4-1.

But to his players he also shows Holland's weaknesses from the group games.

Hiddink wants to get his playmaker Arshavin free ‘between the lines’.

And he knows he will let Boulahrouz do the build up on the right flank as he knows that the defender is not very good at that.

A quote from sports psychologist Afke van der Wouw in a Dutch newspaper is remarkable.

From a distance she sees a strong player in Boulahrouz, but she also says that people who have just gone through a ‘big life event’ are prone to injuries.

"The mental damage makes them less strong physically," she says.

Coincidence or not it is Boulahrouz who has to come off injured after 54 minutes, but Van Basten also replaces his right back because he has been booked and because he is having trouble with the buildup.

The choices that have been made and the impact of them; everyone has their own thoughts about them.

Six months after Boulahrouz he still agrees with the decisions made.

He gained a lot of strength from the many supportive messages he received.

During the tournament he received condolences from prime-minister Balkenende and from the Italian team.

His daughter was buried on the morning before the game.

Had the same thing happened to the Russian team, then Guus Hiddink would also have let the player involved decide whether he wanted to stay or not.

But he would have picked one moment of grief that get all emotions out at once.

"I would have kept it within the team, for one intimate moment with the players and the family. I would have played with black armbands. But Marco undoubtedly had good reasons to do it differently."

"It was a tournament with a lot of family sentiments around it anyway," Kees Jansma says.

"The children came down from the stands after the games, mainly due to the setting in the stadium in Bern. You could hear your family members shouting, they were on the front row. So you had a kid in your arms before you knew it. It was hard to control that. And besides that Boulahrouz had a different position within the squad. He was dropped and then came back so it already was a strange story. We had to try and focus on the tournament again. But it was just impossible. How do you deal with that? It just took us by surprise and it will be like that the next time it might happen."

Van Basten also does not believe yo can come up with some sort f a protocol for situations such as these.

"If this were to happen again in ten years time you will again base you decisions on the circumstances at the time. The place, the players, all will be different. You have to use common sense but also listen to your emotions and then decide. You can discuss it forever, but all in all I think w took the right decision."

"Had we beat the Russians then it would have been: we did it for Boulahrouz and it would have brought the team closer together. So it could have been a beautiful experience. As far as the match is concerned I think that losing Robben had a far bigger impact. But a game is more that just tactics."