It’s Sunday Soccer with Shakespeare!

Right, permit me to gloat for a little bit: My team, Ajax Amsterdam, just beat their old rivals Feyenoord (Rotterdam) 5-1. Ah yes, Amsterdam versus Rotterdam: The only thing these places lack is some bard giving these rivals the old ‘Capulets & Montagues’ treatment.

Well, maybe not.

I’m a big fan of Shakespeare but Romeo and Juliet has never been a play I warmed to. I prefer my teenage suicide pact to take slightly less time than a full five acts.

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Woeful, indeed.

Like Feyenoord today – though the club’s despondent fans can take some cold comfort from the fact that it would have taken longer to sit through that dreaded play.

Okay, it won’t bring them any comfort whatsoever, of course. Ah well – or, as an old Dutch sage once wrote, “Such is life and it gets sucher every day.”

5-1 though…

Brilliant!

Anyway, enough of the football. We’ll exeunt with a bit more Will. Do you know who once said the following about Hamlet?

“Well, yeah, well, we must think about bums on seats,
Bill.  Let’s face it: It’s the ghost that’s selling
this show at the moment.  Joe Public loves the ghost;
he loves the swordfights; he loves the crazy chick in
the see-through dress who does the flower gags and then
drowns herself.  But NO-ONE likes Hamlet — no-one.”

No? Then you better WATCH THIS OLD YouTube CLIP…

… and here’s another one, to round this silly column with a sleep(less night for all Feyenoord fans – okay, enough already…):

P.S.: To those complaining about the use of the word ’soccer’ in the title: Get a life…