2020, Hans van der Meer
No amateur football, no professional football, no Champions League, no UEFA Euro 2020, no champions this year. For over a century, football has brought people together. Now, ‘the most important side issue in life’ has come to a grinding halt. European Fields by Hans van der Meer, a project including a book and a travelling...

Hans van der Meer
Van Melkenbeke’s Garage / Jan Mulder The greatest pitch I’ve ever played football on, is Union’s Dudenpark in Brussels. On the far side of the antique wooden grandstand there was a sloping hill for the fans to stand on. The wood rose behind it. Trees, preferably very tall ones, add drama to the match. Sleet is...

Hans van der Meer
Sunday Football… / Matteo Dore It’s a man re-chalking the lines on the pitch in the shadow of a block of flats, or along a row of poplars, or behind an old farmhouse, looking onto the mountains or perhaps onto an industrial warehouse. It’s a bench that only a few can sit on while the...

Hans van der Meer
Human Foibles And Fellowship / David Winner Beside the drystone wall of a Victorian cemetery in Yorkshire, a group of amateur footballers in blue and black are putting up goalposts. They drape nets awkwardly across top beams, jiggle the uprights into position, laugh. In the absence of anything as new-fangled as a changing room with toilets,...

Hans van der Meer
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Hans van der Meer
The weekly return to childhood / João Nuno Coelho Portugal, 2004. The year Portugal organised the European Football Championship: eight grandiose stadiums built from the ground up, two more renovated. But, across the country, most continue to play on bare, aged and derelict fields. We are in the realm of the pure, of those who...