16-year-old Dutch Stoke fan Henri Keuter (@HenriSCFC) gives us the first of what will hopefully be many columns about his experiences following the Potters from Holland.

Here in Holland, English football is very popular. Loads of people watch all of the games and it’s a very popular subject at school or work. When there’s a big or important match, me and my friends meet up at the weekend to watch the games from that afternoon. Since most of the games that we wanted to watch were being broadcasted on TV we decided to meet up that weekend. When the matches began we booted up our 5 laptops and broadcasted a game on each one.

I was really confident about Stoke that afternoon, my prediction was a solid 5-0 win. I knew our recent form hasn’t been that great since my friends mugged on about it every single day. They said we were a relegation side and if Stoke was playing in the Dutch league we would be relegated a long time ago. When we watch football we usually boot up our 5 laptops to watch all the matches we want to watch. My dad was with us to last Saturday watching his favourite team PSV as always. PSV still had title hopes but they shared points with relegation side ADO Den Haag.

Stoke v Hull:

Remember that these are opinions not just from me. These are opinions that I gathered from Dutch football fans that know Stoke well and watched their last game (like my friends).

It was around 5 AM. The game just ended and me and my friends were talking about it. We talked about the 3 beauty’s that  Stoke had just scored, and who was our best player on the field that day. Because we’re Dutch we always keep an eye out on the Dutch players. We are so happy here that we have such a decent centre-back like Indi, who has been tearing it up in the Premier league this season. At the beginning of the season we were really impressed by Pieters. In fact, we were really surprised that he wasn’t called up for the Dutch national team.

Stoke isn’t a club that everyone knows in Holland, especially not in Urk. So when my parents go to cities like Almere or Eindhoven, I go with them. When my parents were shopping I went into the city and asked people about Stoke. Most people didn’t know the club but there were some people that had some great stories about the club. They told me about their trips to the stadium and their opinions on Stoke at the moment. They said that the club is heavily underperforming, and that Hughes is the cause of that. I also asked them how many times they went to England and visited Stoke. Most of them said once but they ensured me that the Britannia had the best atmosphere of all the stadiums that they’ve been to.

How will this blog continue next week?

As I said, I travel to at least one of the big cities in Holland per week. That means that I will gather opinions from all over Holland. I’ll do my best to keep some variation in the blogs by asking different questions, and maybe interviewing famous people from all over the Netherlands. Thanks for reading this article. Don’t forget to give me some feedback on my Twitter account. I hope you liked this article and continue reading the next parts when they’re up.

Thanks.

Henri Keuter.