Aftertaste of bizarre football evening: will FC Groningen still be a laughing third? ‘I must be the bitten dog now’

It was the aftertaste of a bizarre football evening. One that you will still reminisce about ten years from now. While the relief on the Telstar field could not have been greater after the 1-1 equalizer in injury time by Groningen hero Thom van Bergen, a major promotion party was started in Kerkrade because Roda JC believed that the spoils had been won at the expense of FC Groningen .

First to the cozy Schoonenberg sports park in Velsen-Zuid. Until deep into injury time, Telstar seemed to become the proverbial banana peel that would cost FC Groningen direct promotion to the Premier League on Friday evening. The fact that the number seventeen of the first division still capitulated in the 95th minute was nothing more and nothing less than a gift.

In the ravine

Trainer Dick Lukkien also realized this afterwards. In the dressing room, during the short debriefing, he told his men that FC Groningen was not on the edge of the ravine. No, they were already there. “I didn’t expect it anymore,” the Veendammer coach said honestly. “We played the worst match since we started playing with this composition in November. Then you can speak of very bad timing.”

It was easy to blame the absence of the injured Luciano Valente. “You miss that, one hundred percent,” Lukkien agrees. “But it doesn’t absolve the others. I only thought Thom van Bergen was up to par, not to mention the headed goal with which he won that important point for us. The rest of the team was unrecognizable. Telstar seemed to be able to run even faster than us. That doesn’t suit us at all. Above all, we must be critical of ourselves.”

Assignment unchanged

But the most important conclusion was that FC Groningen still has direct promotion in its own hands. “We’re still alive,” says Lukkien with a relieved smile on his face. “The assignment for the home match against Roda JC remains unchanged. We have to win. Everyone is already looking forward to that match in a swirling and sold-out Euroborg. It could be a beautiful evening.”

They thought very differently about that on Friday evening in Kerkrade. The promotion party was already celebrated on the Roda JC field as if the final match of the competition between the Limburgers and the Groningers would no longer be about anything. The speaker in South Limburg was responsible for the fact that the Kerkraders were briefly in a promotional frenzy.

Speaker makes a mess of it

At first the man was under the impression that it had remained 1-0 for Telstar in Velsen-Zuid. After the equalizer, he stopped the Limburg party via the microphone, until the announcer announced, based on disinformation, that it had still become 2-1 for Telstar. Once again the party started in the Parkstad Limburg Stadium. A short time later, the speaker had to retrace his steps again because the alleged goal was disallowed. A bizarre situation.

The truth was that there was no question of a 2-1 between Telstar and FC Groningen, let alone that the goal had been disallowed. While the Roda players went to the dressing room in bewilderment, the poor Kerkrade microphone player was vilified. “I first realized that it had become 1-1,” he said afterwards in front of the ESPN camera. “They are always lucky, those people from Groningen. At one point someone said that it was still 2-1. I should have verified it better, but the internet at Roda JC is very bad. Then something like this can happen. There were people standing next to me crying, everyone was in ecstasy. I went along with it. I may be the bitten dog now, but I can’t change anything anymore.”

Bizarre scenes

In the Groningen camp they think that it may have done something to the upcoming opponent mentally. Who will best digest Friday night’s emotional rollercoaster, that is the big question. “I am not a qualified psychologist, but I can imagine that it was a bit of a blow for Roda JC,” Lukkien, who quickly became aware of the bizarre scenes in Kerkrade, thinks out loud. “We will see what the effect is next Friday.”