AGOVV Apeldoorn to open Huntelaar Stand on 27 September
11 September: Klaas-Jan Huntelaar is to become the
third ever Ajacied to have a stand of a football ground named
after him. On Thursday 27 September, Dutch First
Division club AGOVV Apeldoorn will open a
brand-new stand behind one of the goals at their
tiny, but beautifully situated home ground of Berg & Bos,
and it will carry the name of the striker who scored 26
goals in 35 league games for AGOVV in 2003-2004, the season of
their return to Holland's professional league.
The summer of 2003 was a highlight in the history of the
'The Blues' from Apeldoorn: having spent 32 years in the
amateur leagues, the modest club from the heart
of The Netherlands 'went professional' again. Their
budget was small, their home ground tiny, they had
no reputation whatsoever and they didn't really set
the First Division on fire in their first season.
Yet, AGOVV drew the attention of press and public, almost
exclusively because their striker was Klaas-Jan Huntelaar.
Huntelaar had just turned 20. He had joined AGOVV on loan
from PSV, after a single first team appearance for the
Eindhoven and a very unsuccesful loan spell at De
Graafschap, the club from his area of birth.
Huntelaar had nine Eredivisie appearances for De Graafschap,
but didn't score. He joined AGOVV as a PSV fringe
player, who had been deemed surplus to requirements by
two clubs. In Apeldoorn, however, he developed
into a goal-scoring phenomenon. He joined Heerenveen after only
one season in Apeldoorn
and the rest is history. His current record in the Dutch
league: 142 matches, 102 goals. At Ajax: 51 league appearances,
42 goals.
"Thanks to Huntelaar AGOVV Apeldoorn made more of an impact
than even the greatest optimists could ever have expected," the
official AGOVV Apeldoorn website explains. "He made clear, in
an impressive way, that a modest footballclub can play a key
role in a great career."
The new stand at Berg & Bos will be opened on Thursday
27 September by Huntelaar himself, on an evening of
festivities.
Source: VI.nl, Nu.nl
Some background...
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar is the third Ajacied to have a stand of
a football ground named after him. The first, in 1965, was
not a player, but a coach: Jack Reynolds (1881-1962). The stand
opposite the main stand of Ajax's former home ground of De Meer
was named after the Englishman, who coached Ajax for -
roughly - a quarter of a century, professionalized the
club and made Ajax big in Holland.
The second stand named after an Ajacied was the
first one named after an Ajax player and also the
first to be named after an Ajacied who was still alive: as a
player of Feyenoord, Johan Cruijff played his very last game as
a professional footballer at PEC Zwolle. The main stand of
their Oosterenk Stadium was named after the Ajax
icon in 1984.
The Huntelaar Stand at Apeldoorn's Berg & Bos
football ground will be the first stand to be named
after an Ajacied who is still alive and still playing
football. In fact: Klaas-Jan Huntelaar must be the
youngest footballer player ever in the world to have a
stand named after him (on 27 September, he will be 24
years and 46 days of age). Please correct us
if we're wrong!
Also, the Huntelaar Stand will soon be the
only stand of a football ground named after an Ajacied
that still exists: the Reynolds Stand (and the rest of
De Meer) was demolished in 1996. FC Zwolle's Oosterenk Stadium,
including the Johan Cruijff Stand, was torn down this year.
For the record... No football stadium was ever named after
an Ajacied, although the Ajax supporters of Vak 410 put up a
black banner with the words 'Rinus Michels Stadium' on
it during every Ajax home game. For the time being,
however, the ground is called Amsterdam ArenA.
Only one street in Amsterdam is named after an Ajax player,
and it is hardly a real street: the almost impossible to
find Anderiesenhof, a tiny little cul-de-sac in the city's
western suburb of Geuzenveld, was named after Wim Anderiesen
(1903-1944), one of Ajax's most prominent pre-World
War Two players. Yours truly was just informing the
attendees of Ajax USA's inaugural Rendezvous in Amsterdam about
this, when of them noticed that we were -
totally coincidentally - walking down Maxwell
Street at that very moment... Whatever other people might
say: Maxwell will probably forever be the only ever
Ajax player who had an Amsterdam street named after
him decades before he was even born. And no-one would have
known if it wasn't for Ajax USA!
Dan reaches up to Johan Cruijff on the 'Cruijffbrug' in Park
De Meer.
Even in Park De Meer, the residential area you'll find
where the old stadium once was, no streets were
named after Ajax players. Instead, they were all named
after the world's famous football
stadiums. When walking into Park De Meer from
the tram stop on Middenweg, however, you'll cross a little
wooden bridge named after Johan Cruijff. You won't even find it
on Amsterdam city maps, but hey: if you ever join us on our
famous (?) Ajax USA History Tour during a future Rendezvous in
Amsterdam, we will take you there! (MP)
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