With Wimbledon now in full swing, the country’s annual if sometimes brief obsession with tennis is once again taking hold.
But there is now a different racket sport which is starting to gain traction amongst many former footballers, including, five years on from hanging up his gloves, ex-Wolves goalkeeper Dorus De Vries.
And that is the discipline of padel.
Padel is a racket sport of Mexican origin, generally played as doubles on an enclosed court with walls that are in play, with solid stringless bats and balls with slightly less pressure than the tennis equivalent.
As of last year, there were over 25 million people playing the game across more than 90 countries, including not just De Vries, but also plenty of other former Dutch footballing talent.
The now 43-year-old has already shared a court with Rafael Van Der Vaart, Ronald and Frank De Boer, Wesley Sneijder and Dirk Kuyt.
A veritable feast of Netherlands talent who could probably still do a job at the Euros!
Elsewhere, the likes of Lionel Messi, Neymar, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Zinedane Zidane are also self-confessed ‘padelistes’. And the current England squad have been enjoying games in their downtime at their Euro 2024 training base in Blankenhain.
The sport is certainly growing!
“I love it,” says De Vries.
“When I first retired and went back home, I played a bit of Footvolley, a mix of beach volleyball and football which is very popular in Brazil.
“I enjoyed it and it got quite competitive playing a few tournaments but it was still very demanding on the body, being on sand.
“Then the pandemic arrived and all that stopped but when things got going again, padel was really taking off.
“I’d never really played any racket sports before, apart from a bit of ‘illegal’ tennis as a kid when we would jump over a fence and play on some courts after they had closed!
“A friend of mine has his own padel court, and, I had a couple of games with him, and from there I was addicted.
“There is a really fun group of people who play out here, whether that’s entrepreneurs or former players, and in those situations it’s very much like the dressing rooms from back in the day with the competitive nature and the laughter and the jokes.
“There is an edge which always comes with that, and that’s also really good fun and something I really enjoy.”
If it is five summers since De Vries officially announced his retirement, it is 11 since he bid farewell to Wolves, after two years which clearly went nothing like he would have hoped or anticipated.
Infact, perhaps unsurprisingly, he now reflects on a “disastrous decision” that he decided to move to Molineux in the first place…
Click https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/wolverhampton-wanderers-fc/2024/07/04/dorus-de-vries-double-fault-at-wolves/ for the full feature.