Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football
Author: David Winner (Usually dispatched within 24 hours)
“1974 was actually very painful to us all,” says Dutch psychoanalyst Anna Enquist. “We can’t admit to ourselves that something can be so important. But it matters very much. There is still a deep, unresolved trauma about 1974. It’s a very living pain, like an unresolved crime.”
En Vincent zag het koren
En Einstein het getal
En Zeppelin de Zeppelin
En Johan zag de bal
(And Vincent saw the corn
And Einstein the number
And Zeppelin the Zeppelin
And Johan saw the ball)
–Dutch cabaret song
The intellectualisation of football has always foundered on a simple problem–the players. Doing all your most rewarding thinking with your feet seems to dull the philosophical impulse. Unless, of course, you are Dutch. According to legend, Europeans played a moronic, muscular version of the world’s game, until Holland proclaimed its vision of total football in the 1974 World Cup, and enlightenment dawned.
In Brilliant Orange–the neurotic genius of Dutch football, journalist David Winner explores his personal fascination with the land that gave the world Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Johan Cruyff–searching for reasons why such a tiny country has produced some of football’s most intelligent, enigmatic and unfulfilled teams.
Winter talks with the players, past and present–including Johnny Rep and Ruud Krol from the losing World Cup Final sides of 1974 and 1978–uncovering their personal experience of the public triumphs and disasters. But it is the breadth of his enquiry into what it may mean to be Dutch–reconciling a colonial past with a multi-cultural present; living with the memories of wartime occupation and collaboration; the tensions between a fiercely individualistic, libertarian spirit and the principles of communality–that makes this such an extraordinary and wonderful book. –Alex Hankin
BRILLIANT ORANGE? BRILLIANT BOOKThis is quite simply one of the finest football books written in years. The first indepth study of football in Holland and the pecularities and style of that football so quintessentially Dutch. Winner examines the finer points of Dutch football (without being side-tracked by the Ajax Academy) and what makes Dutch football so different, so unique, by examining it in its historical and social context as well as its sporting context. Ajax, Johan Cruyff, Rinus Michels, the heartbreak of the 1974 World Cup Final, the Dutch football mentality and the Dutch national team’s record at taking penalties (which, incredibly, is worse than England’s) are all examined thoroughly yet succinctly. The interviews with Johnny Rep, Ruud Krol and Dennis Bergkamp top off a fascinating book that is very rereadable.
Dutch Brains. Dutch Beauty.
Brilliant Orange, by David Winner, has to rank as one of the best soccer books I have read
in a long time. This is a book with brains spilling out over the edge. It is much
more than a story about Dutch Soccer. It is an inquiry into how ideas and philosophies
present in Dutch society underpinned some of the greatest teams and players to
have ever played the game. While it is an entertaining and stimulating read, it
also manages to be instructive technically and tactically. Coaches and players
will find this book very useful in terms of identifying what it takes to play
the game at its highest level. And what fascinated me the most was Winner’s study
of beauty and the idea of the Beautiful Game. If you want to best understand what
the Beautiful Game is about, you may want to read this book before any others
on the subject, including Pele’s My Life and the Beautiful Game.
Class
Winner’s book is a class act, much like the Dutch national team he examines. Not so much about football, as the whole Dutch ethos on life, politics and architecture, Winner manages to plot their footballing history in context to social shifts and changes, providing answers to questions like, Why are the Dutch worse than England at penalties? Sublime, technically gifted and ouzing quile, and that’s just the team… Brilliant Orange is well worth the read.
Gazza: My Story
From the sublime to the riduculous
tragedy
Running with a pack of wolves