Joop van Daele (77) shot Feyenoord to the World Cup, on which an Argentinian kicked his glasses

In the Feyenoord Museum, it is dusty in a display case. In addition to the Europa Cup and the World Cup, the health insurance fund glasses of Joop van Daele is a crowd puller in The Home of History. The ‘twelfth man’, who died this week at the age of 77, Feyenoord shot in September 1970 to a 1-0 win over Estudiantes: the first world cup for a Dutch football club. Queen Juliana was allowed to hand out the cup in De Kuip.

Even more than the dry bang with which the newly collapsed from Daele made the winning goal halfway through the second half are the heated scenes just afterwards on the retina of every older Feyenoord fan. Van Daele’s glasses, Written by Toon Hermans and sung by (Rotterdammer) Luc Lutz, became a modest hit. Producer Johnny Hoes also released a single (Where is the glasses of Van Daele) But had to get it out of the market because it turned out that copyright was in the photo of the football player.

Nothing seen after that goal anymore

In the Ad Van Daele gave an eyewitness report of the incident in 2020. « I didn’t see anything after that goal anymore. Immediately after the kick -off my glasses died. Oscar Pachamé jerked that thing off my head. The referee didn’t see it. That Argentinian sprinted away, I after it. Pachamé then gave the glasses to his teammate Oscar Malbernat. »

Van Daele continued with his high voice in Plat Rotterdams: “It was also a cheap health insurance fund with small glasses that fell into my eye sockets, so I could do well. Gerard Meijer tried in vain to repair things with leukoplast. With my normal glasses I always played the glasses, I took my side in my side in it were. ”

Lee Towers glasses

Van Daele would play with contact lenses the following year, he says a world first. On the street in Rotterdam he ran for decades with a large ‘Lee Towers glasses’-everywhere he was recognized and had to hand out signatures. And that for a ‘eternal twelfth man’. Van Daele combined football with a job as a counter official at the PTT. « For the Europa cup final in Milan (in May 1970) I had to take three sniffing days for my own account. »

After his Sunday shot against Estudiantes he had no shortage of (reserve) glasses, he told it Ad. « In an interview with a newspaper from the PTT I had made a call. That earned me 167 glasses. I didn’t need them in the end because I received a few soft lenses from an optician. »

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