Hup Holland, Hup!

It’s finally here! Tomorrow, the long 4 year wait will be over for all of us football fans in the world.. the World Cup is finally back!

Unfortunately for me, Colombia once again failed to qualify… so I’ll have to be rooting for another team thie time. Luckily, my second home managed to easily qualify for the tournament, and so Oranje will be coming back to the world stage after a short absence in Korea/Japan 2002.

Last time the dutch were on a World Cup in 1998, they were beaten by Brazil on the semifinals (those damn penalties have never favoured the dutch…) and this time they hope to finally break the curse and become world champions.

Remember, 32 years ago in Germany 74, they marveled the world with ‘Total football’ under the command of Johan Cruijff. 14 years later also in Germany, it was Marco van Basten who scored a precious goal against the USSR in the final to give the Netherlands their first European Cup.

It is now 18 years from that, and of course they are back in Germany, and van Basten is back… all the signs are there: Oranje is up for BIG STUFF in this World Cup!

Pd. in a moment of boredom, I digged out an old character I had come up with about 5 years ago, originally intended as a mascot for my then thriving football website. It was meant as a Colombian Condor who’s crazy for football and I made several versions of him wearing different international shirts.

So here’s the new & updated version of “Willy Valdera” for the coming World Cup, accompanied by Okkebas, the cartoon mascot I made for my old student house’s site (go check it out by the way www.okkebas.com)