Football journalism

The football journalism I do can broadly be divided into four categories.

European match reporting:  

I cover matches in the Champions League, Europa League, Europa Conference League, Nations League, European Championships and the Women’s EUROs for UEFA.com.

For the club competitions this involves going to the matches and writing a report that is published on-line as soon as the match is finished, and then afterwards interviewing players and putting together a review based on what they say. These interviews are also filmed and put on the website alongside the written story. See, here, here, here and here.

In 2014 and again in 2018 I was lucky enough to interview the game's greatest-ever player: Lionel Messi. I did it in Spanish. I also interviewed Johan Cruyff in Dutch.

Official UEFA.com Dutch correspondent: I am the official Dutch reporter for UEFA.com, but also the Dutch correspondent. Sounds similar, but it’s not. As a reporter I’m involved in covering games, whereas as a correspondent I do a lot of interviews during media days and am basically the link between the Dutch FA and UEFA.com. 

A lot of the interviews I do form the basis for features which are created for TV football magazine programmes are distributed throughout the world. Here’s one on Ajax, for which I interviewed CEO Edwin van der Sar.

When something newsworthy happens, I write about it for the UEFA website. This obituary for Rob Rensenbrink is just one example.

Writing on Dutch football:  I contribute several articles each year to When Saturday Comes about various aspects of Dutch football. This is not directly match-related, but it's to do with other issues such as proposed club mergers, league restructuring, threats to football journalists or the fortunes of a particular club.

I've also done a fair bit of stuff on the Dutch team at the European Championships and World Cup. Here's an example. And I write now and then for the WSC website. 

BBC Radio Scotland: I used to be a regular guest on the BBC Radio Scotland programme 'Chick's World of Football'. Usually live on air, I'd talk about what was going on in the Netherlands (and sometimes in Belgium). The show was broadcast on Tuesday evenings and was also available on the BBC iPlayer.