Jort van der Sande has revealed how a podcast and a Facebook message made him an international star.
The Dundee United striker is very much the poster boy for the Bonaire national team and helped his side to a 1-1 draw with St Vincent and the Grenadines yesterday (Fri). The 28-year-old spent several years in the Dutch colony as a child and spoke about it on a podcast when he was at NAC Breda.
That led to a surprise Facebook approach from the Bonaire Football Federation who wanted to check out his eligibility and to see if he wanted to play for the Caribbean island. Van der Sande, who is now preparing for Monday’s game with El Salvador in the Concacaf Nations League, confirmed: “I was on a podcast three years ago and in the conversation, it turned to Bonaire. They were talking about my youth and asked if I was able to play for the national team.”
“I said I don’t think so because I wasn’t born there and my parents weren’t born there either. I thought that was the rule, I didn’t have a passport because it’s Dutch. But six months later, I got a message on Facebook.
“Someone over there was listening to the podcast and they said they’d done some research so we think you can play. Because I went to school there and if you live there for five years I can play.”
The youngster has gone to Bonaire because his parents had gone there to teach. It was touch and go but the five years was there long enough to allow their son to fulfil a surprise international dream. The 28-year-old confirmed: “And it turns out I lived there for five years. Exactly!
“They were counting the days in the end because they saw it was 1998 to 2003 and the amount of days worked out perfectly. My parents were teachers. I think they were looking for Dutch teachers who wanted to teach in Bonaire. My father saw an advertisement and he was like, I’m doing it.”
The Dutchman also went to school in Bonaire and ended up beside another future Bonaire internationalists. The United striker explained: “When I started playing, one of our team-mates, Jurven Koffy, told me he has a picture at home of his primary school class and there’s one kid with red hair.
“So I said there are not many kids with red hair here! He’s from the same year as I was born in so we both knew it was probably me. The day after we spoke he sent me the picture – and I have the same picture hanging up in my parents house!”
Van der Sande has played most of his career in the Dutch Second Division but his move to the Scottish top-flight means he is playing at a higher level than any of his Bonaire teammates. He stated: “Is there an expectation on me when I play there? Yeah.
“It’s kind of a village. It has like 20,000 residents, so everyone knows each other. So it’s a different kind of pressure you have here but there are big expectations.”
Playing for Bonaire is now without its challenges. It is a nine hour flight from Amsterdam and the heat can be a major issue. The former Den Haag star warned: “You don’t play while the sun is out.
“We had one training session once because they wanted to go to the church with it because they’re really religious. They wanted to go to the church to have a blessing for the team. They thought now it’s easy to just do training afterwards.
“I think we went to the church at 7 in the morning and we had a training around 8.30 and it was already 29-30 degrees. But everyone was complaining and struggling. This is crazy to be on the pitch at this time.
“I was quite happy that everyone was struggling. 9 out of 10 times you just train after the sunset.”