“We did bring the boat back, you know. But only after we had sailed out. The only disadvantage was that my brother was at school with me. So then the principal asked him where I was. Of course he could not answer that. Then the principal called my house. When I came home in the evening, my mother asked how it had been at school. Totally class, I would say. Well, then I got a hit! Ooh …! My mother “I had enormous coal shovels of hands. Then my head suddenly turned the other way. After about five days she had forgotten my mischief. Then I went to pick up a boat and sail again, haha.”
Boskamp did not do much of it at school. “I had a very strict schoolteacher with a black suit with stripes. If you said something wrong, he would slap your head, pull your ear or your hair. And I was not the best boy. So I was often screwed. At one point I was fed up. Then I – hupsakee – threw a chair upside down. Well, I had to get off. ”
He says his football talent has been Boskamp’s salvation. “As a child I was always playing football on the street. I was good at that. That has been my luck. Otherwise I probably would have worked in the harbor all my life. Or at my uncle’s fruit company. Instead, I was scouted by Feyenoord at the age of 15. For 7800 guilders I was allowed to play football with the youth and at the same time work for the club. That was an ability at the time. I made more than my dad. What I did? Everything! From cleaning changing rooms, mowing the lawn, collecting balls to cleaning the shoes of the first team players. After two years I was picked up at Feyenoord 1. That was of course fantastic! I suddenly played with the best of all time: Coentje Moulijn. ”
When presenter Sander de Kramer asks Boskamp what his best Feyenoord-Ajax was, the former football professional starts to laugh. “My best classic was the race that I warmed up for ninety minutes! It was in the Olympic Stadium. Rinus Israël played football with a syringe against the pain. Theo Laseroms played with an injection against the pain in his shoulder. But they looked at those guys like: don’t get into the sixteen meter area, eh. They have been there once and then not again. We won 1-3. And then we became champions. I haven’t played a minute myself, but I didn’t care. That was my mistake. I was more of a supporter of Feyenoord than a professional footballer. Normally you have to have typhus in it when you are not playing. I didn’t have that at all. I just wanted Feyenoord to win. ”
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Boskamp takes presenter De Kramer to his ‘favorite place on earth’: the place where the Energiehal once stood in Rotterdam-West. “This is where I met my wife Jenny”, explains the sympathetic Rotterdammer. “We went with a group of Feyenoord players to have a look at friends who had to play basketball in the hall. Jen was there too, with her handball team. I saw her and thought: what a world woman! I was instantly madly in love. How did I decorate her? Well, I’ve been very, very sweet. But it wasn’t easy, you know. Before I got a kiss from her, I almost retired. Jen really was a world woman! ”
Then Boskamp stares into a distant distance for a moment. “Unfortunately, she died way too early from that fucking disease cancer. She was only 53 years old. Her death hurt me a lot. I didn’t feel like doing anything anymore. Really don’t feel like doing anything anymore. Still not a day goes by that I don’t think about Jen. Most of all I miss her plain truth. She was a real Rotterdam girl. They throw everything out. Fantastic…”
When asked if you only run into the love of your life once, it pauses for a moment. Then Boskamp says: “I now have a very sweet girlfriend: Lydia. I’ve agreed with myself not to compare her to Jen. She can never win that. And I don’t think that’s fair to Lydia. That’s how it is.”
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