Sixty year-old Surinamese VP makes big league debut

MOENGO. — The 60-year-old Vice President of Suriname, Ronnie Brunswijk, decided to play for a team he owns in a CONCACAF League fixture — with less than positive results.

Brunswijk owns Inter Moengotapoe and is also the club’s president, but the politician decided to take a more hands-on approach, for their last-16 game against Olimpia on Tuesday night.

Not only did Brunswijk pick himself but he captained the side in the stadium named after him.

He also played alongside his son Damian up front, for much of the game.

Video clips from television coverage of the game show Brunswijk not appearing to move around a great deal, as he shouts instructions at his teammates and lambasts one teammate for not passing to him.

However, a match report from the game stated that Brunswijk completed 14 of the 17 passes he attempted in his 54 minutes of action.

The competition is North America’s equivalent of the Europa League.

In playing, in the game at 60 years and 198 days, he became the oldest player to appear in an international club competition.

Indeed, Brunswijk outdates North American confederation CONCACAF itself.

He was born on March 7, 1961 while the organisation was founded on September 18, 1961.

The team probably won’t fancy their chances of overturning that deficit when the second leg takes place in Honduras next Wednesday.

A video was also circulated appearing to show Brunswijk in the Olimpia dressing room distributing money to their players after the game.

“We are extremely concerned at the content of a video circulating on social media which raises potential integrity issues surrounding the CONCACAF League match between Inter Moengotapoe and CD Olimpia,” CONCACAF said in a release.

“The matter is being referred to the CONCACAF disciplinary committee who will commence a formal investigation and a further update will be provided when that process has concluded.”

Brunswijk certainly has a colourful past — he was a rebel leader for the Jungle Commando during the Surinamese Interior War in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a campaign that resulted in hundreds of deaths before a peace treaty was signed in 1992.

He has been prosecuted in absentia by the Netherlands in 1999 for drug trafficking and even when he became the country’s Vice President in July last year an Interpol warrant for his arrest remained active.

He isn’t currently on their red notice list.

But Brunswijk is very popular in Suriname with a New York Times profile describing him as the “Robin Hood’’ of the country because he distributed money earned from his crimes to the poor, sometimes throwing it from his helicopter.

In 2002, he built the 3,000-capacity Ronnie Brunswijkstadion for Inter Moengotapoe but his involvement in football has often been controversial.

In 2005, he was suspended for allegedly threatening some player with a handgun during a match. However, the suspension was later retracted because of a lack of evidence.

And in 2012, Brunswijk was suspended for a year after verbally abusing a referee. — Mailonline/The Athletic.