Believe

Would you bring your own microwave to work if the special meals cooked in it would help your performance?

Weird question, right?

While preparing to watch a football game of the Dutch champions last Saturday evening, I saw the opponent stepping out of the team bus carrying a heaving industrial microwave into the stadium.

Shortly before the match, the coach explained that the supplier of special post-game recovery meals had offered the microwave to ensure the meals were cooked correctly.

This coach is not your typical leader; he’s a game-changer.

I didn’t know him until a few months ago, when his team, out of nowhere and completely against all predictions before and even during the season, managed to claim the last promotion spot to the highest football level in the Netherlands. Their budget to run the first team is approximately two percent of the budget of the champions.

When asked, all sports journalists who provided predictions for the league listed Telstar as the primary candidate to be relegated from the league again. The last time they won in the top league was in May of 1968, two months after I was born.

All the ingredients were available for Telstar to be invisible this year and not play a significant role in the…