The €1,000 Croquette and the Governance Blind Spot European Football Still Won't Name

On December 21, 2026, Dutch television cameras captured a moment that Dutch football would revisit for nearly a decade. During the half-time break of Feyenoord versus Heracles Almelo at De Kuip, Michiel Kramer — then a substitute striker for the home side — sat in the dressing room eating a croquette roll. Nothing elaborate: a breaded meat snack, a familiar Dutch treat, sitting alongside trays labelled healthy and a stack of frikandellen.

A few days later, Martin van Geel — Feyenoord's technical director at the time — fined Kramer 1,000 euros. Seven years later, on television, Kramer recounted his reaction: that was a very high number. One croquette, one fine, a story that seemed to end in laughter.

Then Kramer opened another door. On the set of Vandaag Inside, he said that snus — nicotine pouches placed under the upper lip — was widely used in his dressing room, and still is. All footballers use that, he said, almost challenging presenter Wilfred Genee, who had just described nicotine as something that comes with elite sport.

A croquette was punished. A habit was ignored. The gap between those two facts is the subject of this article, and it is not as small as a talk-show anecdote suggests.

To understand why a half-time snack became such a durable story, it has to be placed in its proper ecosystem. Feyenoord are one of the big three of Dutch football, alongside Ajax and PSV. Heracles Almelo are a mid-tier opponent, and the match of December 21, 2026 was a domestic cup tie — the kind a big club is expected to win. With low competitive stakes and little result pressure, the media narrative quickly slipped away from the tactical and into the personal. A match that left no mark on the table left a mark on collective memory. It is a familiar paradox of football: what matters least competitively is what gets retold most.

Dutch and Benelux football culture has an under-discussed feature: croquettes, frikandellen and snus are not exotic. They are normalised to the point that nobody treats them as strange. That is why this small detail has such longevity. It does not describe an exception; it describes a habit. And a habit, unlike an exception, needs no explanation — it only needs repetition.

In source terms, this story comes from a television stage, not from an investigation. Vandaag Inside and In de Wandelgangen are shows that reward provocative soundbites. People do not go on them to present data; they go on them to create a moment. Goal.com — a global aggregator — picked up the quote and pushed it into a headline. The distance between a studio remark and a global headline is the starting point of any serious analysis. In my trade, the first step is always to identify the source tier: this is entertainment-tier, not investigation-tier. Entertainment-tier has its own value, but it does not operate on the same evidentiary standard.

Kramer, as a retired player, holds no transfer value, no wage burden, no contract risk. He is no longer an asset on any club's balance sheet. But he still holds something else: a media brand. And that brand needs to be fed with moments. This is the key point readers tend to miss when they only look at the headline. A retired player no longer scores goals; he manufactures stories. In an attention economy, a story is worth more than a goal in a cup tie nobody remembers.

The core of the story lies in a governance asymmetry. Look at the structure of the sanction. In 2026, Feyenoord had a technical director willing to fine a first-team player for eating a snack. That act had a decisive feature: it was visible, it was caught on camera, it could be seen by public opinion. The club responded within days. A 1,000-euro fine — for a leading Dutch club — carries no financial meaning. It carries symbolic meaning: this is how an organisation sets standards, and also how it protects its own image.

Meanwhile, according to Kramer, a widespread nicotine habit existed in the dressing room with no sanction mentioned. This is where I want to pause longest. When an organisation fines the visible and ignores the invisible, its disciplinary system does not operate on health or professional standards. It operates on the logic of the camera. A fine does not measure the severity of a behaviour. It measures the visibility of a behaviour. This is a principle I have learned over years of watching clubs handle media crises: reaction speed is proportional to the number of people who saw it, not to the actual damage.

To place this in a legal framework, one fact is needed. Nicotine is currently not on WADA's Prohibited List. It sits on WADA's Monitoring Program, meaning use is tracked but not sanctioned. This is crucial, because it explains why a near-universal habit produces no anti-doping sanction. No fault, no violation, no suspension. Only a gap. And gaps, in sports governance, are usually where the biggest habits live.

I want to stress the difference between the two kinds of claim Kramer makes. When he says snus is a bigger issue than the croquette, he is not making a doping claim. He is making a health-and-culture claim. This is the distinction most articles miss when they headline a shocking revelation. A doping claim would require a listed substance, a testing protocol and a sanction. A health claim requires only an admission that something is happening to players' bodies that nobody is measuring.

Snus is a smokeless nicotine product placed under the upper lip, releasing nicotine through the mucosa. Kramer admits two things in the same story: it is bad for you, and it makes you very calm. The second is more notable than the first. An addictive substance used not merely out of habit, but for a perceived psychological benefit. In an environment where stress is constant — before a match, during it, after it, after a defeat, after a 90th-minute goal — something that makes you very calm can be viewed as a tool, not a vice. This is why purely moralising anti-addiction campaigns tend to fail in sport: they do not engage with the function players assign to the substance.

This pushes the analysis to what I consider the true core. Feyenoord in 2026 had a dedicated club doctor, Casper van Eijck, who travelled from hospital to every home match. That is a marker of a top-tier club with full medical infrastructure. Yet, per Kramer, a widespread nicotine habit persisted untouched. Medical infrastructure was present, but substance-use welfare policy was not enforced. This is the gap between capability and will. A club can have enough doctors to detect a problem, but detection without action produces only a silent record.

Kramer also described the half-time atmosphere: we were messing about a bit in the kit room, and I was just eating one. A relaxed, informal environment where tolerated behaviours can persist. The club's disciplinary structure at the time looks more reactive than proactive: it handled what was caught, not what existed. In governance terms, this is the difference between event-based compliance and system-based compliance. The first needs an event to trigger it. The second needs a policy to run.

This is where I must be explicit about the limits of the evidence. The claim that all players use it comes from a single retired player, on a television show, with no prevalence data, no study, no independent confirmation. I have no basis to turn it into a number. But I also have no basis to dismiss it. A single testimony cannot measure prevalence. It can measure normalisation. And normalisation, in this case, is a notable signal. A person can overstate frequency, but it is very hard to overstate the fact that a behaviour is no longer considered shameful.

Based on my experience watching matches and press conferences, I see a recurring pattern: player-welfare issues become public topics only once they have existed long enough to become normal. Alcohol, gambling, sleep, mental health — all travel the same road. Stage one is denial. Stage two is private acknowledgement. Stage three is a player speaking out on television. Stage four is a written policy. Snus, on my reading, sits between stage two and stage three.

In 2026, I priced rumours. Now rumours price me. When I began tracking the Serie A transfer market at 19, I believed a story's value lay in its accuracy. I was half wrong. A story's value lies in its ability to reveal a structure behind it. A quote can be wrong on numbers yet right on structure. Kramer's claim, read as a statistic, is weak. Read as a signal of a governance gap, it is strong.

Arthur-Pjanic taught me that a deal can die on the pitch yet live on the books. A similar principle applies here: a behaviour can die in the press yet live in the dressing room. The croquette died in the press — it was fined, mocked, finished. Snus never died in the press, because it never truly appeared there with full weight. It lives in a grey zone that the club, the regulator and the media all agree not to look at.

This is where I want to go against the official story. The story the media tells is: a former player reveals a shocking secret — snus is rife in professional football. That story is attractive, viral and forgettable. It takes a studio remark, wraps it in the clothing of a finding, and sells it as a scandal. But the blind spot lies elsewhere. The worry is not whether snus is widespread. The worry is that the disciplinary system of a top club reacts to cameras faster than to players' health.

The croquette was fined because it was seen. Snus was not fined because it was not seen. Reverse the situation — if snus were caught on camera in a funny televised moment — would it be fined? Probably yes. And that very possibility shows the standard is not the behaviour but its visibility. Such a disciplinary system does not protect players. It protects the club's image. Those two goals can overlap, but they are never identical.

An insider told me: the market has no villains, only latecomers. Here, the latecomer is the player-welfare department — always a beat behind the media and several years behind players' habits. No one in that 2026 dressing room woke up intending to harm their own health. They simply did what everyone around them was doing, in an environment where it was never questioned. The only villain, if any, is the system's delay.

Another counter-intuitive point: Kramer controls this story. He was not exposed. He told it himself. He upgraded it from a funny memory into a systemic claim. For a retired player, controlling your own narrative is a professional skill. He no longer scores; he manufactures moments. And in the attention economy, a moment like all footballers use that is worth far more than a croquette. I say this not to diminish him, but to give the testimony its proper weight: it is both information and product.

This is why I do not read that headline as a finding. The cheapest rumour is the rumour we most want to hear. A story about a banned substance lurking in professional football is a story the public wants to believe. It matches the stereotype of a glamorous underworld, of stars with bad habits. But the evidence here is far thinner than the feeling the headline creates. A headline can contain an exclamation mark and still lack a dataset.

And one more thing matters to me. The longevity of this story does not come from snus. It comes from the croquette. The snack is the memorable part, the retellable part, the part that becomes an in-joke in Dutch football. Snus is the part that stirs debate for a few days. The croquette is the part that lives for years. If anyone wants to understand why a small event has a long life, the answer is here: it is endearing, harmless, and demands no change from anyone. Stories that demand change die fast. Stories that demand only a laugh live forever.

Zooming out, this story touches an industry transmission chain. Upstream is player behaviour and dressing-room culture. Midstream is club governance and the anti-doping system. Downstream is media, player welfare and — most important in the long run — imitation in academy cohorts. If a first-team player openly discusses snus on national television and faces no consequence, the message to a 17-year-old in the academy is clear. Nobody writes that message down. But it is transmitted, and it is received.

This is why I treat this as a welfare story, not a doping story. The current risk is not sanctions. It is health, plus a latent risk: if nicotine were ever moved from the Monitoring Program to the Prohibited List, habitual snus users would face compliance exposure no club has prepared for. Such a rule change needs no advance notice. It needs only a meeting. And the players using snus today will be the first to discover that a habit tolerated for years can become a violation in a single morning.

Financially, I want to put the 1,000 euros in its place. For a leading Dutch club, it is immaterial in accounting terms. It does not appear on the balance sheet as an event. It affects no financial compliance metric. But a small fine can carry a large normative load. In internal audit, one distinguishes material error from systemic error. 1,000 euros is an immaterial error. But a club choosing to fine it — while ignoring something else — is a systemic signal.

In the context of Dutch football, Feyenoord is an entity with significant but not unlimited resources. They compete with Ajax and PSV in a league where the financial gap to the big European leagues is a constant. In such an environment, good internal governance is not a luxury; it is a competitive advantage. A club that manages players' health and behaviour better will have a more stable squad, fewer losses and fewer media crises. This is why this small story has a large dimension.

I want to return to the evidence question once more, because it is central to how I work. In the transfer market, I learned a rumour does not need to be true to have value. It only needs to reveal who wants what. A rumour floated by an agent reveals that the agent needs a new negotiation. A rumour floated by a club reveals that the club needs to pressure another deal. Kramer's testimony, by the same logic, reveals that a habit was normal enough to be spoken about without shame. That is the real information.

Player agents are the market's biggest hidden cost, and the noise they generate distorts everything. Here the noise-maker is not an agent but the player himself — yet the mechanism is the same. The noise is not generated to clarify a problem. It is generated to keep a name in the flow of attention. Understanding this lets me read stories like this without being swept along by their rhythm.

On the stakeholder side, no party faces result pressure from this story. Feyenoord in 2026 lost no points over it. Heracles Almelo gained nothing from it. Martin van Geel faced no significant backlash. Kramer today only reinforces the image of a colourful character, a brand he has built for years. The only pressure, if any, is on a system never designed to handle this kind of issue.

There is one thing I always remind myself when analysing stories like this: do not let the appeal of the anecdote replace the dryness of data. The anecdote is the door, not the house. The croquette is the door. Snus is the door. The house is the question of how a modern sports organisation manages the health of its very particular workers — people whose bodies are assets and whose habits are costs.

I also want to be clear about what I am not writing here. I am not writing that all players use snus. I am not writing that Feyenoord tolerated a harmful habit. I am not writing that WADA is about to ban nicotine. I am writing that a gap exists, that the gap is measurable through how a small fine was applied while a large habit went unmentioned, and that such gaps are usually filled only after a bigger incident occurs.

Michiel Kramer's story will pass in a few weeks. But one question should be kept longer: if a top club has enough doctors, enough medical infrastructure and enough resources to fine a croquette within days, why did a reportedly widespread nicotine habit produce no welfare policy at all?

I no longer chase breaking news. I chase the reason breaking news is lit. Here, the fire was lit not to illuminate a health issue, but to sell a television moment. And when the fire goes out, the real problem remains: a generation of young players watching those ahead of them and learning to stay silent about what is tolerated.

What I want to see is not a new fine. I want to see a club answer this question before a journalist asks it. Because when the answer only appears after the cameras have rolled, that is not governance. That is reaction. And in a sport where everything is measured — from metres run to hours slept — failing to measure something reported as universal in every dressing room is a choice, not an accident.