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How one word hit Ajax icon Van Basten right in the heart: ‘Pancake!’

ANP

NOS Football

It’s not the cynicism. It’s not the arm gestures, the beating on the chest. It’s not the intense look. And not the Amsterdam accent either. No, it’s that one word: pancake.

It is January 2009 when Ajax loses at home to Heerenveen. Trainer Marco van Basten has to take care of the first national title since 2004 in Amsterdam, but has no chance immediately after the winter break due to the second defeat in a row.

The crowd starts to grumble in the Arena. Many fans leave early: when the final whistle sounds, the stadium is already largely empty. An Ajax fan reports to the front row at the main stand, waiting for Van Basten to step off the field.

When the trainer goes down the stairs, the fan addresses him. “Hey Marco, thank you… Pancake!” Van Basten sees it, stops at the bottom of the stairs. Says something back and then continues. Not knowing that this one word will haunt him forever.

2009: emotional Ajax fan calls trainer Van Basten for pancake

Former team manager David Endt sees it happening right in front of him. “I think that man – and I love Van Basten, don’t get me wrong – translated what the people actually thought at the time, with the bad results and the bad game”, Endt now looks back.

“Normally the things that are shouted from the stands go up in a lot of noise. Now he stood there, alone, in a prominent place and he spoke straight to Van Basten. That made it all more dramatic.”

View images of Ajax’s lost match against Heerenveen below.

2009: ten Ajax lose sight of the national title after defeat against Heerenveen

“I did feel a kind of vicarious shame. Although the term pancake is not very hurtful, it is of course not fun.” Van Basten, then working on his first job as a club coach, is quite affected, according to Endt.

From eternal hero to vulnerable man

“I think that emotion also came because he himself had the feeling: maybe that man is right somewhere. Where others might think: take a look at it, Marco is still attracted to things. I especially thought it was very bad for him.”

It is precisely that one, almost friendly insult ‘pancake’ that suddenly made the three-time European Footballer of the Year and two-time World Footballer of the Year, the player who gave the Netherlands its largest football prize in history, a vulnerable man.

Years later, it turns out that Van Basten does something when presenter Wilfred Genee has an interview appointment with him for a TV program. Van Basten has already promised, but drops out the night before, when he hears that the program has requested the ‘pancake fragment’.

Van Basten reacts

Only in his biography It just is from 2019, Van Basten discusses the incident. “The word pancake will never sound the same to me again. You would say: how bad is that? An innocent, almost playful word. But somehow he hit me with that word.”

“Precisely because it is so innocent, so ordinary. Because it is such a stupid word. And that made it extremely painful: that guy was not wrong. It was a direct hit from that boy”, the autobiography continues. .

Pro Shots

March 2009: supporters ADO Den Haag pick up on the pancake incident

Van Basten feels powerless after the defeat in the Arena. “Whether you knew football or not. Whether you had won three European Cups and three Golden Balls or not. It didn’t matter anymore.”

“Pancake. Something worse couldn’t touch me at that moment. I really felt like a pancake,” he admits It just is toe.

Dismissal at Ajax

With today’s knowledge, the well-known fragment symbolizes Van Basten’s coaching career. Where as a football player he could make the impossible possible (just think of unparalleled volley in the European Championship final of 1988), he fell short as a trainer.

And Van Basten himself is the first to confirm this. Less than four months later, he handed in his contract as head coach of Ajax. His main reason is that he did not meet the set goals and that he does not feel that he would do better the following season.

ANP

Ajax supporters on the training field to get a story from trainer Marco van Basten

“In retrospect, the moment was a harbinger of what would happen,” Endt describes. “Marco van Basten was put on a pedestal because of his footballing qualities, not because of his coaching abilities.”

“He has not been able to deliver what was hoped for after Ajax.” Van Basten later did not have much success as a head coach at Heerenveen and AZ.

The word ‘pancake’ still haunts the sports celebrity. “Hopefully he can see the humor in it by now,” says Endt. “We also do not want to remember him as a pancake, because he is not at all.”

To add jokingly: “And Van Basten doesn’t have poffertjesporum either. Also such a beautiful, Amsterdam term…”

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