Michiel Kramer Recalls Nearly Fighting Gert Kruys at Volendam: When Dutch Football Turns Memory Into Merchandise

On the familiar bar stool of Vandaag Inside, Michiel Kramer said a sentence that made me rewind three times. He was talking about Gert Kruys, his old coach at FC Volendam, who, he said, "spoke to us young lads in a belittling way." Then he added: "At a certain point, I'd had enough. We almost fought." But when asked what Kruys had actually said, Kramer shook his head: "I can't say exactly what he said. That's for the biography."

Three sentences, and an entire problem fits inside them. A man tells a story but withholds its most important part. A coach is named on national television, yet not a single response appears in the report. And a viewer like me, sitting eight time zones away, wonders: are we watching football, or a carefully staged performance?

There is no goal in this story, no tactical diagram, not a single coin of transfer money. But it touches something Vietnamese football also wrestles with every day: how adults treat youth, and how the media turns that pain into sellable goods.

Context: a small story inside a large ecosystem

To understand why an old anecdote matters, it must be placed in its proper position.

Michiel Kramer is a Dutch striker, born in 2026, who has worn the shirts of Feyenoord, ADO Den Haag, Sparta Rotterdam and several other clubs. He is a classic centre-forward: tall, unafraid of contact, living on instinct inside the box. His career has no dazzling peaks, but it is long and thick enough to give him the right to recount what he has lived through.

Gert Kruys is a veteran coach of Dutch football, born in 2026. He has managed FC Volendam and several other clubs within the Dutch professional system. He is also the father of Rick Kruys, a former FC Utrecht midfielder and now a rising coach. The name Kruys is therefore not merely an individual but a branch in Dutch football's coaching network.

FC Volendam is a small club on the shore of the IJsselmeer, known for its youth-development tradition. It is a stepping-stone club: a place where young players come to be polished, then leave when they are ready. In such a place, the coach carries double weight. He does not merely teach football; he shapes how a boy believes in himself.

Vandaag Inside is the most-watched sports-entertainment talk show in the Netherlands, broadcast on SBS6, hosted by Wilfred Genee, Johan Derksen and René van der Gijp. De Oranjezomer is a similar programme. What they share: audiences come for backstage stories, not for charts.

And that is the most important piece. Kramer did not tell this story at a press conference, before a federation, or in a formal complaint. He told it at a bar, on national television, in prime time. He first told it on De Oranjezomer in June, then retold it and "added more" on Vandaag Inside. The same story, two stages, and one detail deliberately withheld.

That setting shapes how we should read the story. This is not testimony before a court, nor a complaint filed with a federation. It is a story told at a bar, where, by the very nature of the genre, truth and entertainment are often mixed together.

Picture the wider backdrop. Dutch football is a clearly stratified system. At the top sit Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord, competing for the Eredivisie title and appearing in European competition. Below them are AZ, Utrecht and Twente, clubs with European ambition but modest budgets. Then comes the large remainder: mid-table sides, yo-yo clubs moving between divisions, and development clubs like FC Volendam.

At the bottom layer of this pyramid, a coach's role is entirely different from the top. At Ajax, the coach manages a collective of grown stars. At Volendam, the coach chisels raw stones. One mistake in treatment at Volendam can destroy an entire career before it begins.

That is why this story, though small, carries weight. It is not about tactics. It is about the foundational conditions under which talent can survive.

What is really happening: an outdated management model

Set emotion aside and look at the structure. Kramer's account, even as a one-sided telling, describes a very specific management model: a coach who leads through hierarchical pressure rather than relationships.

In that model, power flows one way, from top to bottom. The coach speaks, the player listens. The coach judges, the player endures. When Kramer uses the words "condescending" and "belittling," he is not describing a personal quarrel. He is describing a system.

Here is the key point: Kramer says this treatment was not only for him. "Not only to me, but also to other young lads in the squad." If this account is accurate, the problem is not a clash between two men. The problem is the culture of an entire dressing room.

In modern football, this model is seriously outdated. Sports-psychology research over the past two decades points in one direction: young players learn fastest when they feel safe to make mistakes. A coach who belittles his students does not produce brave players. He produces fearful ones, and fearful players do not dare attempt the through-ball into the channel.

I have seen this in Vietnam. During my years in the profession, I sat taking notes at youth-club training sessions. There were sessions where an eighteen-year-old stood trembling after a scolding, and then, in the match, he passed backwards instead of playing the line-breaking ball. Fear leaves its mark on the pitch, even when it was sown in the dressing room.

There are talents buried beneath contemptuous glances; I have seen them bloom — but I have also seen far too many that never bloomed, simply because no one gave them enough soil.

The old model harms not only players. It also harms the coach himself. A coach who leads through fear earns obedience, but never loyalty. When the team struggles, when the score turns against them, obedience evaporates, and nothing remains to hold the dressing room together. The teams that succeed sustainably in modern football are built on relationships, not hierarchy.

At FC Volendam at that time, according to Kramer's account, relationships had been replaced by hierarchy. And when hierarchy is all that remains, conflict becomes unavoidable.

Youth is the group with the least voice

The most striking element of Kramer's account is its target. The treatment was aimed at the young players, the group least able to push back.

A young player at a small club has three things to lose: his place in the team, his professional future, and his belief in himself. He has no voice, no powerful agent, no standing in the dressing room. When he is belittled, his only options are silence or explosion.

Kramer chose explosion. "At a certain point, I'd had enough... we almost fought." But notice what this incident reveals. In that environment, when conflict reached its peak, no resolution channel was used. No team meeting, no intervention by management, no one stepping in to mediate. A young player and a veteran coach faced each other directly, and the only solution was a near-fight.

When a system has no release valve, pressure finds a way out at the weakest point. The weakest point here was a young player and his dignity.

But there is a question I cannot answer, and I want to say plainly that I cannot answer it. Kramer says other young players were treated the same way. How does he know? Did he talk to them, or merely observe? And if they truly went through something similar, why did none of them speak up for all those years?

Perhaps they were afraid. Perhaps they did not want to remember. Perhaps they had left football and no longer cared. Or perhaps the story did not unfold exactly as Kramer remembers it. A single account, however sincere, is still a single account.

What I can say with certainty is this: if a development environment forces young players to choose between silence and explosion, that environment is failing at its most basic task.

Asymmetry: one speaks, one stays silent

There is one detail in the report that I consider more important than the story itself: Gert Kruys did not respond.

There is no comment from him in the article. No response from FC Volendam. No confirmation from other squad members that season. The entire story comes from one side, and the other side remains entirely silent.

That silence can be read two ways, and I want to make clear I cannot choose either with certainty. One: he chose a no-comment strategy, letting the story settle. Two: the story was judged too minor to warrant an answer. Both are reasonable.

But however you read it, the asymmetry is present. One man speaks on national television; the other has no chance to rebut in the same space. In any system of justice, that is a problem. In media, it is an inherent feature of the genre.

In the silence of an empty stadium, the data whispered things no one expected. But here, the silence is not in the stands. It is on the other side of the story, and that is why I cannot treat Kramer's account as a verdict.

I have spent years watching Eredivisie matches, and I have learned that Dutch football has a very particular cultural trait: people speak bluntly. Coaches criticise players publicly, players criticise each other in the press, and no one treats it as scandalous. That bluntness is part of the identity. But it also creates a grey zone, where the line between criticism and insult blurs, and where a word spoken in anger can be dissected years later.

The withheld detail: "for the biography"

This sentence is the detail that made me pause longest: "I can't say exactly what he said. That's for the biography."

Two things are worth discussing. First, a storyteller who withholds the most important detail cannot have his story regarded as complete. Second, saying "for the biography" reveals another layer of motive: commercial.

I do not say this to criticise Kramer. People have the right to earn from their own story, and a sports autobiography is a legitimate project. But readers must recognise that when a story is told in installments, each time revealing a little more, that is a media strategy, not merely a moment of recollection.

Kramer has told this story at least twice, on two different shows, at two different times. First, he said Kruys "belittled" players. Later, he "added more," and the story escalated to a near-fight. That is a familiar trajectory: the story is gradually upgraded to keep the audience.

Data gives me numbers, but an empty stadium gives me questions. Here, the question I ask is: if the most important detail has not yet been spoken, what are we actually judging?

And there is another possibility few consider. Withholding the detail may stem from caution, not strategy. If Kramer named the specific words, he might face a defamation risk. In the Netherlands, personal-defamation law is strong enough to make anyone weigh their words before naming and quoting. Withholding the detail may be a legal shield and, at the same time, a media lure. Two purposes, one action.

The machine that turns pain into content

To fully understand this story, one must look at the ecosystem that produced it.

Vandaag Inside and De Oranjezomer belong to a particular Dutch television genre: sports-entertainment talk shows, where former players and pundits sit around a bar, drink beer, and tell stories. Audiences come to them not for tactical analysis, but for what happens behind the scenes.

This genre rewards candour and does not reward verification. The more shocking the story, the better. The more private the detail, the better. And the heavier the accusation, the more views.

In that environment, Kramer's story is a perfect product. It has a villain (an older coach), a victim (a young player), drama (a near-fight), and a lure for the future (the autobiography). All the ingredients of a viral clip are ready.

But remember this: the same machine that produces the story can also crush its teller. If Kramer's account is contradicted, or if his autobiography is judged exaggerated, the very audience that praised him may turn away. Entertainment media is loyal to no one. It is loyal only to the next story.

I have witnessed this many times in my career. A person goes on television to tell a shocking story and is praised as brave. Six months later, that same person is called an attention-seeker by the very same audience. The cycle is short, and it never ends in the teller's favour.

The heat cycle of Kramer's story is currently in an acceleration phase. It has been told more than once and is being expanded. But its underlying structure is weak: no documentation, no corroboration, no formal complaint. Such stories usually have a short life unless someone responds. And so far, no one has.

Vietnamese football seen through this story

I sit in Nha Trang, rewatch the clip, and think of home.

Vietnamese football is at a stage where clubs are beginning to recognise the value of media. Podcast channels, punditry shows, and conversations with former players are flourishing. This is good. But we are also entering the same waters Dutch football swam long ago: waters where backstage stories become merchandise, and where a person's dignity can be used as bait.

I do not oppose storytelling. I work in this profession because I believe in the power of stories. But there is a line between exposing a system and exposing a person. Criticising a toxic coaching model is necessary. Naming an individual on national television, when that person has no chance to reply, is something else.

In Vietnamese football, I have seen young players treated in ways no different from what Kramer describes. No one recorded it. No one went on television. They simply left football quietly, and no one knew why.

I remember an afternoon in Nha Trang in 2026, sitting taking notes at a training session while male colleagues scoffed. I saw a young player making passes no one noticed. I wrote about him and was mocked as "a woman who knows nothing about tactics." Three months later, he was called up to the national youth team. The difference was not in my knowledge. It was in looking with curiosity rather than prejudice.

That lesson applies here. When a young player is belittled, there are two ways to react. The first is to ignore it, to treat it as normal football business. The second is to look at it with curiosity and ask: what is really happening in this environment?

There are World Cup nights when I understand that football does not belong to the winning team. It belongs to those left behind, those without a stage, those whose stories are never told because they are not entertaining enough.

A counterintuitive angle: where I might be wrong

Here I must argue against myself, because a one-sided article is a poor one.

I may have been wrong to cast doubt on Kramer. He may be telling the truth, and withholding the detail may simply be to protect those involved, or to save it for a legitimate personal project. A person who has been hurt has the right to tell his story the way he wants.

I may have been wrong to think this story lacks weight. If what Kramer says is true, it exposes a toxic coaching model that harmed many young players — and that, even without data, still has warning value.

I may have been wrong to read Kruys's silence as a signal. Silence is not admission. Sometimes silence is just silence, because the story is too small to bother with.

And I may have been wrong to impose a Vietnamese lens on a Dutch story. Cultural contexts differ, and what I treat as a problem here may be ordinary there.

But even if I am wrong on all of the above, one thing remains true: we need a way of reading this story that neither inflates it into a verdict nor dismisses it as a joke. Between those two extremes is where a journalist should stand.

And there is one possibility I have not considered: that I myself am trapped in another prejudice. I am used to the image of a female pundit having to prove her competence in a male-dominated industry. That prejudice may lead me to read this story through a lens of power and injustice, when its essence may be far simpler: two people who did not get along, one of whom had a microphone.

I leave that possibility to the reader.

Conclusion

Tactics will fade, but the story of belief will not. And this story, in the end, is a story about belief — a young player's belief in his coach, and the audience's belief in the storyteller.

What I want to see is not a war between Kramer and Kruys in the press. What I want to see is clubs, in the Netherlands as in Vietnam, looking at this story and asking themselves: is our environment producing players who dare to dream, or only players who know how to fear?

And what I want from the media is a little restraint. A one-sided story, told at a bar, with its most important detail saved for the future, deserves to be heard — but does not deserve to be treated as the final truth.

There are talents buried beneath contemptuous glances; I have seen them bloom. But I have also learned that sometimes the one who belittles and the one who tells the story are two roles in the same play, and we, the audience, are the ones paying for the ticket.