Duck Duck ... Chicken?

[Victor]

I've mentioned before that I am easily surprised by colloquial
expressions that might not phase others. I hope I am not just stirring
another tempest in a teapot.

An interesting twist in English football today. Chelsea sacked its its
rather prominent coach (manager) and there were some speculations that
Guus Hiddink, who has been coaching the Russian national team, might be
hired to replace him. Hiddink's agent, Cees van Newenhausen, observed
that the chances of Hiddink changing jobs are slim. But he added an
extra flair.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/09022009/58/premier-league-chance-hiddink-chelsea.html
"He is doing pretty well with Russia and wants to get to the World Cup
in South Africa for the fourth time in a row, with a fourth different team.
"He's currently at a training camp in Turkey and I think (Chelsea owner)
Roman Abramovich would not make too many friends in Russia if he were
_to steal a goose away_ from the national team. I can hardly imagine it."


A search for "steal a/the goose away" revealed fewer than 10 hits, all
but one referring to the quote.  Even changing to "steal a/the goose
from" did not improve the situation--these mostly refer to stealing an
actual goose or to a line from an 200+ year old rhyme. (The law condemns
the man and woman : Who steal a goose from off the common ; But let the
greater villain loose: To steal the common from the goose.--By the way,
in what dialect does that rhyme?)

One commenter observed

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=11610
Steal a goose? Is that an old Russian saying or did he actually say
'steal Guus' and somebody used their spell check in Office a bit too
vigorously?


Is this guy on to something?

Here's where this gets bizarre. I thought that this was some idiomatic
Dutch or Flemish expression. But my Dutch is not sufficient--certainly
not enough to catch some idiomatic nuance. So I ran Google translator on
"trying to steal a goose away from them". The translation appeared
rather quickly, "proberen te stelen van een kip uit de buurt van hen".
There is only one problem--there is a "kip" (chicken) where I expected
"gans" (goose). (Plus, of course, there is no guarantee that the
translation is anywhere near accurate--and, as I mentioned, my Dutch is
simply not good enough.) So, it appears that there might be an
expression in Dutch, but... it does not involve "goose". Swedish, French
and German don't have this problem.

The question remains, where did this "goose" come from? Is there some
proverbial "goose" in some Flemish dialect or perhaps in German? Or is
the lone comment correct and someone just screwed up "Guus" and then
added the article to fix the "grammar"? At the moment, I am inclined to
go with the latter. Besides, it's the more intriguing possibility.

And I am also wondering how that "kip" crept into the Dutch translation.
Is this a real Dutch expression or did Google just screw up in a very
odd way?

    VS-)

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