Everyone’s fantasised about doing it with twins

Just remember, people - you heard it here first! See, over on the banks of the Bosporus, the talk is of RONALD de Boer signing for Galatasaray! As far as the supporters of Turkey’s Partick Thistle strip-wearers are concerned, “Ronnie” has signed for them becuase he’s been sacked by Rangers and “he wants to finish his career playing alongside his twin again”!

Naw, honest! There’s pictures in the Istanbul “late faynelle” of Ronald going through his pre-signing fitness test. Or, should I say, there’s pictures of A MAN WHO LOOKS LIKE RONALD DE BOER, wearing a training top emblazoned with the initials RdB, going through his paces on the Gala training ground!

Mmm? Notice any parallels with tonight’s Scottish sports headlines and TV pictures from Murray Park?? Mmmm?

Yup - once again, the man WE know as Ronnie De Boer, and the man the folk nearest the Western edge of the Anatolian peninsula know as Frank de Boer, has conned the entire footballing world. Yeah, that’s right - “has”, not “have”. See, they urnae twins - “they” are THE SAME GUY!

Yes indeed. I’d stake my reptation as a respected journalist on this revelation - sorry - this EXCLUSIVE. The secret which Mr de Boer has been successfully hiding for years is that Johan Cruyff was not, after all, the most gifted exponent of the Dutch art of Total Football. It was, in fact, de Boer.

We all gloried at how much space these Ajax boys could cover in the Seventies, when they won three European Cups on the trot and got their national team to two successive World Cup finals. Louis Van gaal’s side of the mid-nineties brought an even more sophisicated, athletic edition of the same lateral-thinking ethos and organic strategy to a wider public when his Ajax reached two successive Champions League finals, wiinning it in 95 and finishing as runners-up in 1996 by dint of a penalty shoot-out against Juventus in Rome.

What no-one - not even Van Gaal - realised was that Marc Overmars wasn’t, in fact, the fastest guy in that Ajax side. Edgar Davids wasn’t the one with the biggest engine, Danny Blind wasn’t the wiliest member of the squad, and neither, as it’s turned out, was Patrick Kluivert the one who’d go on to earn most career money.

Ronnie/Frank - whatever he’s called (perhaps the name de Boer, literally “the farmer”, is a cynical, mocking alias derived from the amount of acreage he covers during any one game in which “both twins” are playing!) - was fast enough to make folk think there were two of him on the pitch. He had the stamina to cover both the centre-half and striker positions in the one game, he had the guile to keep his genius to himself because he realised that being the world’s best-ever total footballer could allow him to increase his earnings by 100% for the rest of his career.

I mean, why do you think Ajax lost to Juve in that 1996 Champions League final? Because it was played in Italy? Because Juve were the better side? Naw - because it WENT TO EXTRA TIME, that’s why! He was KNACKERED!! Similarly, how many games did “Ronnie” play in his first season at Rangers? Hardly any - because he was too busy keeping his “brother’s” place at Barcelona.. He realised Sellik were gonnae run away with the league in his first season in Scotland so he only ever played for us on a Sunday when Barca’d been playing the Saturday night live La Liga game (I’m tellin’ ye - I’ve checked it all out with my sources - or my back copies of the TV Times) - this is why he never really got into top gear at Ibrox during 2000/2001.

Why do you think “Frank” had such a tough time at Barcelona last season? Because he realised Barca were done for and so he was actually over here helping The Gers win the treble (see ye cannae go two seasons in a row without a good shift at one of yer teams, or ye’ll get bumped and be on a single wage. And, for a man with two wives and three hundred and forty weans to keep in clogs, that’s a big loss in earnings!).

Initially, you see, when he hit his thirties, getting into the twighlight of his career, he decided to give himself a break from the old centre-half-and-centre-forward-for-the-same-team-in-the-same-game routine. At first “one of the twins” would start having a wee “injury problem” at Barcelona - so he’d only have to play one position. But he began missing the extra match bonuses so he thought it’d be better to be on the payroll of two completely different teams, only play one position for one team and compensate for the lack of match bonuses by doing more promotional work - in two different countries!

Why do you think “Ronnie’s” been “unable to play” at Rangers for the last five months? Coz he’s been using his limited energy to play centre-half for Galatasaray. Now he’s got his energy levels back up again, he’s ready to use the old injury scam to work his biggest con yet: Take a double wage off both Gala and Rangers for playing both Centre half and Striker.

He’s got the ear of both Eck McLeish and fatih Terhim so all he has to do is start giving it “Gaffer - my brother’s a bit pissed off at Galtasaray/Rangers and fancies coming over here to play in a decent team. Fancy it?”. Then, before ye know it - Bob’s yer uncle, Fannies yer aunt, Ronnie and Frank are the same person - he’s got himself three more wages than any of his twenty team-mates!.

And the fans, just like the various managers of the KNVB first XI who’ve given him, in total, something like two hundred caps for Holland, are none the wiser. He’s faster than the naked eye so we’ll never be able to look round from one box to the other fast enough to catch him covering the same distance. I mean, some weeks, when he’s feeling particularly perky, he’ll knock a long ball up to himself then wait to play himself in for a one-two. He’ll do this just often enough to maintain the con over both ourselves and the Gala punters.

Don’t get me wrong - you WILL see newspaper pictures of “Frank and Ronnie training together at Murray Park” but let’s not forget the genius of the Daily Record’s photomontage technology. I mean, this is the paper which showed Maurice Johnston posing in a Rangers jersey in front of the East Enclosure some ten hours before MoJo even set foot on the marble staircase. And this is the paper which showed John Hartson in a Rangers jersey in front of the East Encl… (noh, wait a minute - that wan actually hapened, didn’t it)

Aye, what I’m saying is the media are in on it - and, just to prove my point, watch out for headlines in yer tabloids tomorrow concerning the words “Klos, Germany, Bundesliga, leaving”. It’s Polish defender Tomasz Klos - he’s just gone back home to play for Wisla Krakow after being released by Cologne.

Frank de Boer and Ronald de Boer both playing for Rangers … at the same time. It’s a lovely idea - wonder if we’ll ever see it happening