As a little exercise, I started looking into this. The claim that he grew up in a trailer park is repeated on his English Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.o

As a little exercise, I started looking into this. The claim that he grew up in a trailer park is repeated on his English Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_van_der_Vaart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_van_der_Vaart): > He grew up on a trailer park, with him belonging to a Dutch cultural minority called the Woonwagenbewoners, with them sharing ties with Irish Travellers and the Yenish people, and often pretended to be Romário while playing football. Yenish are only mentioned as "sharing ties" though. There are two sources provided: one article in De Volkskrant, and one in The Mirror. However, both links are dead now, but available in the Web Archive. The one in The Mirror only very vaguely supports the claim: > 2) He enjoyed a Romany lifestyle as a child and used to pretend to be Brazilian ace Romario in kick-abouts on the caravan park. https://web.archive.org/web/20100901205748/http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/blogs/football-spy/Tottenham-new-signing-Rafael-van-der-Vaart-Top-10-things-you-need-to-know-plus-watch-outrageous-goals-and-tricks-and-pictures-of-super-WAG-Sylvie-van-der-Vaart-article439089.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100901205748/http://www.mirror... The cited article in De Volkskrant, a credible Dutch newspaper, is quite fuzzy as well, essentially saying the van der Vaart grew up at the trailer park "until he and his family moved to Beverwijk". http://web.archive.org/web/20131005045224/https://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/773555/2006/06/21/Rafael-van-der-Vaart-verloochent-zijn-afkomst-niet.dhtml http://web.archive.org/web/20131005045224/https://www.volksk... Van der Vaart's Dutch Wikipedia page (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_van_der_Vaart https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_van_der_Vaart) does not mention any of this. There does not seem any support for van der Vaart's Yenish origin at all. I wonder about the origins and intentions of the claim...