The letter reads:
Dear supporters,
To get straight to the point, I’m going to continue as a footballer at our wonderful club for another year. PEC and I have signed an agreement for the upcoming season. Now probably not everyone will be cheering for this. There will be people who say, it’s been nice, that old man has to stop. I can live with that, but I feel fit and I’m looking forward to another year.
As you may know, I try to put something special in my contract every year. Partly because I like to challenge the club in a creative way (which they are very strong in, by the way) and partly because I genuinely like it myself. Now that I assume that I will start my last year as a football player after the summer and given that I have been playing here in Zwolle all my life, I would like to give something back to you.
So now is the right time to have something put in my contract with which I can thank you all. Thank you for the unconditional support I have always felt. In good times, but certainly also in bad times. For me it is very simple, if you had not had so much love for the club, I would not have played for PEC Zwolle for so long. Van Polen, suck-up, I hear some people think. That’s fine, but that’s how I’ve experienced it all these years and I think it’s great to express it to you in this way.
So what’s the idea? I’m going to give a beer to the whole stadium. Certainly not to celebrate that I will continue as a footballer for another year, but to thank you for the unconditional support. However, giving a beer to thousands of season ticket holders is a challenge. How are we going to approach that? In this letter you will find a special coin with which you can get a drink in the circulation of the entire stadium at the next home game. Enjoy the drink and hopefully (I’ll knock it off) we can toast again at the end of this season.
Thank you again for your years of support that I have always experienced.
The most beautiful club of all.
Bram
Unsurprisingly, this went down very well with the PEC match-going faithful, not that the club captain knew anything about it.
“To be honest I didn’t really hear about all the reactions,” he said. “I don’t have social media. But I know via the club that the people were full of praise.
“The credit for that goes to the marketing team, though. They came with the idea of the free round of drinks and the letter. I just thought of a voucher so people could get their drinks, but they were like ‘if we do it, we do it well.'”
“This had been going on for a while. I had this in mind for longer. I was already considering how to do it and what would be the best moment. I thought this was a good moment to include it in the negotiations. The negotiation itself took like 10 seconds. It was like: ‘Another year?’ ‘Yes, another year.’ ‘Same conditions?’ ‘Yep, same conditions.’
“I have negotiated a few nice things the last couple of years. I wouldn’t call myself a master negotiator, but I’m doing pretty well.”
We’ll drink to that. Proost!
ESPN Netherlands’ Cas Goertzen and Sander van Hal contributed to this report
