Patrick Kluivert. The talented, ill-fated enigma seemingly searching for belonging. Did he find it as the head coach of Curacao?
“I keep going back as if I’m looking for something I have lost. Back to the motherland, sisterland, fatherland. Back to the beacon, the breast, the smell and taste of the breeze, and the singing of the rain”
– Bermudian poet Heather Nova
Perhaps Patrick Kluivert was looking for something he had lost when he decided to take up a role as Head Coach in Curaçao, a tiny Dutch island in the Caribbean, in early 2015. Something missing, an inherent desire to return to his motherland and promote a cause. In the modern game of football, his move was a rarity. Instead of climbing up the European coaching ladder and taking a lucrative position, he voyaged to the land where his mother was born, on a noble quest to deliver the impossible: a spot at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
“My mother is from the island and I really want to give something back to it – that is why I am here” were the first words he uttered to the media who were questioning why he would go from his last role, assistant coach of the Netherlands during the 2014 World Cup, to coaching a minnow, a team far away from the footballing radar. Aged only 38 at the time of taking the role, Curaçao, with its population of 158,000, offered an opportunity for Kluivert, one of Netherland’s most prolific strikers, to stand on his own managerial feet, but in an environment with less pressure than those found in Europe. It offered him a chance to develop his craft away from the eye of the footballing globe which tends to centralise itself in Europe.