Wow what an incredible book. Growing up I was taught the Koerver Football style which was all about individual skill and getting multiple touches of the ball and making yourself as comfortable on the ball as you could. The skill that you need to be able to play the Dutch total football style is incredible but also at a more macro level you also need to be able to flex your style and fit into a system that is in constant flux. This book tracks the development of Dutch football from the 60s and 70

Wow what an incredible book. Growing up I was taught the Koerver Football style which was all about individual skill and getting multiple touches of the ball and making yourself as comfortable on the ball as you could. The skill that you need to be able to play the Dutch total football style is incredible but also at a more macro level you also need to be able to flex your style and fit into a system that is in constant flux. This book tracks the development of Dutch football from the 60s and 70s till the time that the book was published in 2000. There is a strong focus on the 70s era of Johan Cruyff and of course on Ajax who were sensational at the time. They were not improving the game; they were changing the game. This book talks a lot more than football. It tries to give you an understanding of how the Dutch culture, religion in that country and many other factors led to that melting pot of talent and success that drove the Dutch to such success in the 70s and how they were able to play such exquisite football. As someone who is interested in culture and football this is the perfect book for me. Here are some of my favourite bits:

• And Vincent saw the corn, and Einstein the number, and zeppelin the zeppelin and Johan saw the ball. (sounds better in Dutch)

• Spuybroek has taken the notion of position switching in an entirely new direction. His design for a traffic noise barrier near Eindhoven allowed drivers and people in their homes to switch roles. While the homes were shielded by earth works from the noises of the road, drivers could tune in and hear what was going on in the houses as they drove by. House hold sounds – people watching TV, shouting at their children, vacuuming, running showers – were picked up by microphones and broadcast to the cars via a local radio network.

• I think that technology is perfect but you shouldn’t use it to pacify or change reality but to motorise it and speed It up.

• At times there was little else to do but play football. We played every day. If it was raining we played in the bedroom. At school we played football between lessons. When school finished we played on the street again. there was no traffic. We played with anything as long as it was round – rolled up paper tied with string. Some parents had money and could get hold of a proper ball but mostly it was tennis balls. You develop great technique like that. The ground was hard so you didn’t want to fall because it hurt so you developed good balance. And the game was very quick because the hard ground makes the game a lot quicker. No one every told us how to play it was all natural. Now you can join a club when you are 6 years old and you can train maybe once or maybe twice a day but there is a lot of difference between that and playing every day, seven days a week. I was only interested in football. I lived like a monk. No smoking no drinking, going to bed early. People said that i didn’t have a youth but I’ve had the best life.

• (Maradonna’s long dribble goal against England in ’86 world cup) He remembered a game 7 years earlier at Wembley when had been in a similar position and had played the ball to shilton’s left hand and missed the goal. He assessed the current situation and decided that he didn’t need me, he could solve the problem of scoring himself. In a quarter final of a world cup after a 70 metre run, he was able to recall a situation from years earlier, analyse it, process the information and reach a new conclusion. And he did all that in a fraction of a millisecond. That is genius.

• There is no medal better than being acclaimed for your style.

• Early in the second half as he was standing near the centre circle Wim suurbier swept a high arced cross field pass to him. Gerrie Muhren caught the ball on his left foot and incredibly started to juggle with it. Pap, pap, pap ... all with his left foot. The huge Madrid crowd briefly stunned rose and roared. To dare to do such a thing. In the Bernabeu!

• There is some kind of death wish in it connected to our Dutch, Calvinist shame of being good. Our Calvinist culture makes us deeply ashamed of being the best. Its a very common phenomenon in our cultural life. You see how anyone who is better than average is criticised and singled out in the newspapers. Perhaps in football we have the unconscious feeling that its shameful to proclaim ourselves the best in the world.

• Partying especially in huge numbers and preferably in orange is something for which young Dutch people are now famous. Some of the world’s top Djs are Dutch and they hone their skills at huge dance parties attended by thousands ... film maker Jos De Putter sees a more darker element. The whole country is completely torn up so you have this hunger for the feeling of being all together. There is this bizarre incredible urge to party – only to party and to label things the easy way. People want to be amused and they think that everything is amusement. It is very narcissistic. It is insecurity dressed as bravado, anger dressed up as pride, a forceful showing of national colour forcing everyone else, non football lovers or migrants – to join ranks or be despised.

• Television used to say: we are going to explain how things are and then people said, we don’t want you to explain anything, we want you to listen to us. And listen means 2 things in Dutch: listen but also to obey.