The appliance of science to football

The Dutch long ago decided that sport should be an integral part of everyday life for its citizens. Bizarrely enough, this may in some way be due to the sufferings endured by many during the German occupation in WW2. After the war, Dutch parents who had suffered starvation and deprivation of liberty were determined their kids would never face the same evils. Thanks to a post-war economic boom they were able to do this and provide their own kids with good, healthy food. Physical exercise was also in vogue and probably appealed to the honest, hard-working Calvinistic ethic of the time.

This result was that the Dutch children of today are some of the tallest in the world. Either that or it’s in the cheese.
Whatever the reason for its popularity, there is no doubt that football, like many other sports, is very well organised in Holland and touches the life of a large percentage of the population. Children join clubs at an early age and often play throughout their lives. Football is the most popular sport and the rewards of the Dutch system are evident as Holland regularly punches above its weight in international tournaments.
The general mentality around football is one of unrelenting criticism (but often constructive), and the game is taken very seriously. The importance of the game in the Dutch psyche is reflected in Dutch tv football coverage. Football chat shows are rife and the discussions go into a level of detail seldom encountered in the English speaking world.
Football coaches (managers) are taken to task by interviewers whose knowledge of the tactical systems employed by teams is impressive. Incredibly technical conversations are the result and the Dutch viewing public lap it up, clued in as they are.
Perhaps most revealing are the kind of words used during the Dutch football tv chat shows as compared with the same kind of programmes in the UK. On British tv, they talk emotionally of passion, dedication, stamina while in Holland, the buzz words are all technical: organisation, pressing, winning mentality.
In short, the Dutch football mentality is much more scientific and it is no surprise to find that the Dutch are at the forefront of cutting-edge scientific sports research and ideas that the rest of the world later picks up on. There is no shortage of sports physicians, clinical therapists, mentality trainers and other sports specialists in the Netherlands, and no wonder—due to their successful reputation, there are enough customers at home and abroad to ensure they thrive.
Dutch football managers have reaped the benefit at home and successfully exported the phenomenon abroad with them as they step in to help out troubled foreign clubs or countries. Sports papers regularly carry stories of top stars going to consult specialists in Holland, for both motivational and medical reasons. Scientific gadgets and aids are also popular in Holland, like computer analyses of players or situations based on new software and ways of looking at the data which can be harvested from videos of games.
And the future isn’t the only place to seek evidence of Dutch football mastery: the legendary Dutch football supremo Rinus Michels will be forever associated with Total Football, the supreme victory of intelligence, logic and science over the passionate but rather barbaric ‘hoofball’ often seen in the rest of the world, especially in his time.
So if you want to talk football with the Dutch, you should be prepared to learn a few new terms and be serious about it, otherwise they will soon lose interest. You may of course lose interest yourself after a few minutes of dense, severely technical discussions

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