Defeated Dutch honoured at home

Thousands of fans decked out in orange cheered on the defeated Dutch football team as it embarked on a seven-kilometre boat parade down the canals of Amsterdam Tuesday.

Coach Bert van Marwijk and his team, casual in shorts and T-shirts, boarded a river boat decorated with orange flowers on the Ij River near the central station around 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) to a cacophony of applause and vuvuzelas.

“I have never seen a Dutch team fight to the end like this. The players deserve this parade even if they didn’t win,” 40-year-old Denny de Jonge, two chains of orange flowers draped around her neck, told AFP as she waited for a glimpse of the floating procession.

The Dutch team lost 0-1 to Spain in extra time in Johannesburg on Sunday, although playing a style of football described by former Dutch superstar Johan Cruyff, a losing finalist at the 1974 World Cup, as “ugly, vulgar, hard.”

Wearing an orange T-shirt screaming: “Hup Holland Hup” (Go Holland Go), an orange mane on his head and an orange lion’s tail pinned to his shorts in honour of the national symbol, 25-year-old Stefan Bons said Tuesday’s parade would “help us process the disappointment”.

“One doesn’t know when the Netherlands will play in another World Cup final, thus we have to enjoy this to the maximum!” he said of the team nicknamed Oranje (Orange) after the national colour.

Team captain Giovanni van Bronckhorst and coach Bert van Marwijk were knighted in The Hague earlier in the day in the presence of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende who called the team an “inspiration”.

“The Netherlands is proud of Oranje,” Balkenende, wearing an orange tie, told the team at his official residence where he hosted them for coffee and cakes with orange icing in the garden decorated with orange balloons.

The squad then met their sovereign, Queen Beatrix, before departing by helicopter for their official tribute in Amsterdam.

“Even in second place, the Dutch team are champions in the eyes of their country,” the city said in a statement after deciding to press ahead with the boat parade initially scheduled to take place only if the team won.

“We want everyone to be able to see the players, to salute them,” said spokeswoman Hilde Bruggink of the KNVB Dutch football association, adding that more than a million people were expected in the Dutch capital.

After the two-hour canal parade, the players will be taken to the city centre Museumplein (Museum Square), where about 180,000 fans watched them lose the trophy to Spain on big screens Sunday, to be presented to thousands of waiting supporters.

About 1,800 police had been deployed around Amsterdam for Tuesday’s tribute, as well as about 700 security guards and 200 traffic regulators.

Houseboats along the parade route have been fenced off and were being guarded to prevent a repeat of 1988 when several were sunk by fans celebrating the Netherlands’ European Cup win.