Moments later, the referee awarded the Oranjes a penalty. It was scorer Wout Weghorst who was responsible for converting it before celebrating this opener in a demonstrative manner. A celebration which was not to Rafael van der Vaart’s taste, given the circumstances of the match.
The former Dutch star, consultant for the ESPN channel, did not spare the Ajax Amsterdam striker after the match: “When you celebrate like that after scoring… my stomach hurts. A little discretion would have been more appropriate.”
Obviously, van der Vaart was not the only one to have been shocked by this celebration, which prompted Weghorst to react in an interview after the meeting: “I didn’t think about it for a single moment. In the locker room, the press manager came to see me directly and we understood straight away. In hindsight, we say to ourselves that it would have been more respectful not to act in this way. Let one thing be clear, my penalty or my goal are completely secondary to the life of this assistant. I hope there is no doubt about that. But at that moment you are focused and there is a lot of tension. Looking back, I could have celebrated in a more restrained way. But in that moment, you’re so focused and you feel pure relief. It wasn’t conscious, it was the moment, but looking back maybe I should have done things differently.”
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