Tarick Weber joins us for part 30 of the series. Tarick is 17 years old. He loves his sport - be it football or any thing else. He plays with his mates on the street - cherishing the thrill. He follows the Dutch and English competitions closely, but follows the Dutch national team with even more interest.

I thank Tarick for agreeing to the interview.

Tell us a bit about the Dutch football history and the football culture which exists.

In the 70s, we were awesome in football with Cruyff most important - 2 wc finals, both lost. After that we had our ups and downs in football, but in 1989 we became European champions, most important player being Marco van Basten who is now our headcoach! In the 90’s we played very decent football, with Bergkamp being our top man, best we did is semi final in 1998 in the World Cup in France. In 2000 we lost to Italy in the semi’s of the EC in Holland and Belgium, we could have won easly with 2 penalties which were both missed, I couldn’t believe that we lost!

Dutch football culture is really funny, everyone is orange, and drinks a lot and a lot of beer. Brands do a lot of crazy advertising, very entertaining. Most people either invite a lot of people over and watch the game at home, or go to a bar to watch it on a big screen and have a few beers. Football is the biggest sport in Holland, and you can see that, as everyone follows it closely!

Tell us a bit about the Road to the World Cup – the qualification, and the emotions the fans went through at the time.

The qualification went easier then I expected. We won 2-0 against the Czech republic, a team we’ve had a lot of trouble with over the past few years, we always get them in qualification or big tournaments, and always have trouble with them, luckly for us we don’t have to play them in the group stages this year! Drawing twice against Macadonia was pretty stupid, but the rest was pretty good, not a lot of trouble to get there, it was good for a change to not play play-offs! I guess we had a very easy poule compared to other years.

Read the rest of this entry »