Amsterdam’s Ajax wins the Dutch soccer league championship, burying news of IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest. The small Christian Union party changes course, as does a stricken cruise ship. It’s all in the Dutch dailies.

Amsterdam goes soccer mad
Ajax’ Premier League championship victory at home in the Amsterdam ArenA yesterday dominates all today’s front pages. The Amsterdam club won 3-1 from FC Twente.

AD says Ajax had to wait seven long years to get their 30th national championship title. After a bumpy road of a season, the last thrilling match decided which of the two leading Premier League clubs would snatch the title.

The paper says new trainer and former Ajax player Frank de Boer, who celebrated his 41st birthday yesterday, was the big hero of the story. When he took over as manager just before the winter break, there seemed little hope of Ajax becoming champions. But yesterday, he was able to tell the 80,000-strong crowd celebrating in Amsterdam’s Museum Square: “We’re Ajax, we’re the best”.

Under its photo of the team waving to the huge Amsterdam crowd, de Volkskrant informs us that people watching were hurt because of the crush. It also reports that there were problems later in the capital, and that police arrested dozens of troublemakers.

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IMF boss arrested
The only news seriously challenging the football today is the arrest of International Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Like the other papers, nrc.next reminds us of how the French politician turned the IMF around, making it an important organisation again.

Now that he’s been arrested for attempted rape, the IMF is threatened with losing its status, says the paper. It reminds its young educated readership that the IMF played a crucial role in the euro-negotiations with Portugal.

Mr Strauss-Kahn was about to have a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on how to tackle the continuing euro crisis. Even if he’s found not guilty, the paper says he’s now “a lame duck” and asks whether he will survive the affair. This can only be bad news for Europe, it believes.

De Volkskrant appears to agree, saying the EU is losing its “wise man” in the Greek crisis. Just like many of his European colleagues, Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager is reported to have been happy to follow Mr Strauss-Kahn’s line. According to the paper, Mr De Jager has said that, if the IMF refuses to bail out Greece again, he will turn off the Dutch credit tap, acceding to the demands of Dutch populists into the bargain.

Read about the Dutch view of the Greek euro crisis.

Christian party steers new course
“Difficult to pigeon hole”, reads an inside-page headline in today’s Trouw, referring to the small Christian Union party which held its conference over the weekend. The party faithful think the CU has “focused too much on governing over the last few years” and not enough on its Christian agenda.

Not surprising, says the Christian-based daily, as the tiny party supplied three ministers in the last government. The CU’s new leader Arie Slob (an unfortunate name in English but not in Dutch) told delegates he planned “to give inspiration, passion and spirituality a central place”.

Left-leaning de Volkskrant obligingly explains this rhetoric for us, saying the CU’s rank and file think the party became too left-wing and socially conscious during its time in government. They want the new CU leader to move to the right and take up a more populist anti-Islam position and, the paper reckons, Mr Slob will be willing to oblige.

Tragic opera
It should have been a luxury Baltic cruise for 500 Dutch holidaymakers aboard the Opera, De Telgraaf tells its mass readership. But the ship suddenly stopped in the vicinity of Copenhagen on Saturday morning and, since then, its 2,000 passengers have had to make do without electricity and running water.

The paper gives all the upsetting details: the toilets have stopped working and we’re told that the smell is “unbearable”. Passengers have been reduced to throwing their excrement overboard… in plastic bags.

“There were almost riots just now,” one Dutch passenger tells the paper. “There were 300 people in front of the reception, screaming for the captain... I’ve been told that tugs are going to take us to Sweden.” Let’s hope this tragic opera has a happy ending.

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