Football Cultures, Politics, Wars, Colonisation and awesome football players

Lars:

Id say that China did.

Pedro, you make me laugh. That’s exactly what we called them. Here in Canada we called them goal hogs. Very much frowned upon.

I never looked at it that way, but it does make some sense. What we wouldn’t give for a van Nistelrooy.

Posted from  Canada

Oh yeah…

Posted from  Netherlands

Wow Jan, you want Goose to respond after Pedro continually calls him chicken? No Class. Maybe that is the proper term for the Portugese. I think that was evident a year ago.

Posted from  United States

@Jan, Als je geinteresserd bent, je bent van hart welkom om het hier door te gaan (hope my dutch is was OK): http://portugal.worldcupblog.org/euro-2008/portugals-double-duty-trio.html#comments

Posted from  Netherlands

I was a little dissapointed they didnt mention the Italians and Portoguese as divers and even a little fragile. Good comentary on the englisht.
I also feel that their are two major distinctions. The northern countries, like Scotland Sweden and Ukraine, and the southern countries, like Portugal, Spain, and Itali.
The northern countries being the harder working, tougher, but less fancy. The southern countries being more skilled on the balls, able to penetrate the D, and able to find openings to score. But their more lazy and they try to show off a little more. Unable to win as a team. But individualy they dominate.

Posted from  Canada

One quick note on the style differences. The difference between North and South Europe is a bit driven by the state of the pitch.

You play on icy slippery fields you’re going to be less skilled than on a beautiful smooth southern field. On a bad field you can’t use dozens of short passes to set up a goal, you just aren’t going to complete that many in a row.

And on a bad pitch you’ll get a lot more erratic bounces, so heck why not try your luck more often.

That’s not often appreciated. The good coaches will modify their style to match the conditions (and the players they have). Cold and windy – put out really tall dudes to head the ball in the net.

Beautiful day – put out quick shorties like Van de Vaart.

Posted from  United States

sad to see you went along for the ride Jan….

see you

Posted from  Netherlands

Hey Samuel Knight, good point and interesting take but, a little too simplistic wouldn’t you say.

Posted from  Canada

My good friend Goose… what does that comment mean? I was drawn into this “ride” by you and Pedro. You started the historic stuff. It triggered me and reminded me of that excellent Morris book. And then I wondered about a country’s identity and the translation there of on the pitch. That’s all… What is bothering you?

Posted from  Australia

Denmark… A bit too freely, too unstructured, but hardworking and not always too focussed. I miss Alan Simonsen in the list of greatest. And Morten Olsen. And Jesper Olsen. And Jan Molby. Frank Arnesen. Soren Lerby.

England: forgot Kevin Keegan. Peter Shilton. Alan Kennedy.

Scotland… what’s with them? Bravehearts. Passion. Power. They used to have fantastic players and a great team (78, 82). Kenny Dalglish, Gordon Strachan, Charlie “Champaign” Nichols, Robertson (the awesome leftwinger), Steve Archibald.

Posted from  Australia

@Jan; hoped my little dscussion with PedroP would be the last id hear from him or this subject…. what i mean by my comment is that this guy has taken you for a ride…he wants to talk about this bs and you have given him a platform… sorry but this guy is so full of shit its unbelievable

well ill wait till its about football again

Posted from  Netherlands

I don´t care about Portuguese history I care about football!
Bring it on!
By the way, Holland 2 Portugal 1. That´s was a good one, Drenthe showed where the future is going to be brilliant!

I agree with goose/mario. All this socio-football talk is all interesting, but pseudo-intellectual. It’s nice to theorize, but when it comes down to it, it is all pretty much bs. Sport is sport, you have the skills and players or not. What happened 2, 3, 400 years ago is irrelevant.

Posted from  United States

I agree with most of what you said. For Spain I’d add that they start off strong and end in shambles, too busy fighting among themselves to get anything done. Always entertaining, sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong ones…

Posted from  United States

Well guys, I am sorry if I alienated some of you. To me, the intrinsic and deeper value of sport or football specifically has always been of intrest, hence my Desmond Morris remark. I think it’s fascinating stuff, a nation’s identity and the way it’s translated on the pitch.

I did not want to tale sides in any portugal – holland discussion or anything. Basically, it was Pedro / Goose’s discussion that triggered this post.

And I also tried to steer it away from polarization between Holland and Portugal and involve other countries as well…

Ah well… you can’t please every one.

Posted from  Australia

@King: well, no matter if southern do dive more, it doesn’t really matter… It seems the picture is already made, long ago… Do we do it more? I guess so… Are we the only? I’d say not, and I think now of Robben. Anyway, it leads him nowhere more often than somewhere. To the PT’s too… I also fail to see why everybody klings to that idea, knowing nowadays everybody does it. So somehow, diving is wrong but steping on Carvalho’s balls is not so wrong… Oh well… Anyway, the point is that there are other ways of going round the rules… Northern aren’t that pristine example of “hard-work and honesty, therefore the victims of the sneaky and evil and dishonest mediterranian”. But they like to think they are… The so called “Calimero Syndrome”, maybe…

We (PT) don’t brag about being the “victims of the rude and brute northern, who think they can kick hard, just cos they also do it at home and therefore it seems normal to them and it seems that we dive more”. We just say: we’re smaller, we dribble more, so in a foul (diving or not) we eat the grass more often. But hey, we chose to do so. It’s how we play. That’s why we don’t complain so much about it. Yet, we’re always the whinners, round here… So much for coherence…!

About Italy… Dives or no dives, 4 world tittles… Like them or not, it’s not with that argument that you’ll convince anybody…

@Jan: How do you see NL’s identity, culture, etc, in the game…? After all, NL’s football is a mix of the northern discipline with a certain flair, skill and interpretation of the game, usually observed in the south (of europe and of america).

One of the funny things I observe is that, although individuality is somewhat put down round here, it’s also seen in someway as a southern thing (the flair, vanity, etc, catholics vs protestants issues of 300 years ago) – the truth is NL is more famous for the brilliance of their stars, than for a super collective strength. Like, for example, Italy – and nobody can say they lack technique. Even if blended with concepts such as total football, which by definition praise “the team” value…

Thanks again for showing interest in the more social/historical issues, that we naturally see in any manifestation of “a group”. Like Football, Music, Literature, History, etc… I am actually quite interested in how you see it in the case of NL, and I too feel sorry that not a lot more, especially from countries other than PT and NL, didn’t respond to “the call”.

ps – I wasn’t having a “discussion” with goose. But now I was trying to have a debate with you/whoever. I also find it fascinating, cos footbaal reaches everybody and everywhere – all different but all +/- the same…

Posted from  Netherlands

Hey Pedro, I appreciate your comments. And in no way was I trying to say that Northern is better or tougher than southern. Infact I think northern football is just as sneaky if not more they just know how to get under the skin of their opponents. Remember when Rooney stomped on that guys balls and then people tried to say that Ronaldo was responsible and winked at the Engligh bench. That was bullshit, thats why England never win at anything because they are a bunch of drunken hooligans. I like the passion of some of the teams like Serbia and Croatia. They are talented and very fierce at the same time. And we surely know that everyone dives, but the Italians have taken it to another level and no one on this blog can dispute that.

Posted from  Canada

Ok, the Dutch identity. Like I said earlier on, we do have that Calimero effect. See, we the Dutch, think we’re great. (And we are ).

We have that Golden Era background, we beat the ocean with our dikes, we are tolerant, very wealthy (as a country), we used to own Manhattan, Australia, the East Indies etc etc. We even took England over for a while . As a small country, we have that confidence issue that small people sometimes have (Napoleon, Al Pacino, Tom Cruise, Edgar Davids) and it may not come as a surprise that the Dutch are actually the tallest people in the world!! Fair dinkum!!

So, we have an opinion about things and we want it to be heard. When the US attacks Iraq, we truly believe it’s relevant to the world what JP Balkenende has to say about it.

In our sports culture, we pride ourselves on how well we do (Olympics, football, hockey, swimming) with that limited number of athletes to chose from.

As I wrote earlier (I think) it’s typical for us to lose the formal fight with the Germans in WW2 within a day, only to come back with one of the strongest resistance groups.

You see this on the pitch too. It started with JC. Talking to the ref, outsmarting other teams, being creative with tactics (total football) and trying not only to win games but also to impress with our skills. But, Dutch people (and players) have a tendency to talk too much, to ask to much questions (”why” is a popular one) and to think we know it better. And we do… .

And in the meantime, we try to find ways to be more successful all the time. To give you an example: options trading was invented by the Dutch. In the 17th century already (no internet available). It started with the tulips market.

So, to summarize, we have marihuana sold freely in coffee shops, we have the red-light district, we invented options trading, total football, conquered the world and sold it again for a profit (or so we thought), we gave the world Erasmus, Van Gogh, Rembrand, Rietveld, Cruyff… And now we control this blog .

Posted from  Australia

Oh, I forgot… Who invented “football”? Well, the name is English allright, but the Chinese played football already eons before the Gaelic did. And so did the Japanese. And the meso-americans. And the Inuit. Lore has it the game started after tribal wars, when the head of the tribal warlord who lost was chopped off (as one does) and used to play with to impress the warriors who lost.

Pretty neat eh?

Posted from  Australia

jan, I think the dinosaures actually had a game similar where they’d kick around a stone until it landed in a hole dug out by one of the other dinosuars. I cant remember exactly what it was called but if you try it in google that might help. The greek refered to it as “the game of the great lizards”!

Posted from  Canada

lol Skillz

Posted from  Netherlands

@Jan:

I was kinda expecting something more elaborate on the Calimero syndrome… That and other countries as well…

Anyway, the type of pride you show, as well as dutch in general, in your own country and your History and etc, is what I actually envy, nowadays… People in PT are very much proud of theirs but don’t really cherish it anymore, maniphest it or even defend it. They don;t really do much with it or about it… It decays… Maybe it’s our punishment…

We too conquered the Seas, although in a rather different manner. You being dutch, especially living in Australia, know this surelly… Actually, before moving to NL I was convinced +/- everybody in “western” europe knew about The Discoveries, but apparently not really… Not for the adding up of deeds, or “comparing sizes” with the other coutnries, but for what it means conceptually, even in how we see the world today. Like you towards what NL gave the world… Curiously, for what I could see, asians tend to show a lot more knowledge than europeans about PT…

If you made the concept of “overseas trading empire” something viable, mainly through commerce, we invented it by putting West and Far East in contact… And, naturally, finding the way there, which costed a “couple of centuries”, a lot of research, study and a “couple of lives”…

Anyway, the word “own” is somewhat too strong, in my mind… You never really own a country… The only thing that lasts is Culture. The only way it stays is when it can. It can be imposed by force, even for centuries, but it ends up dying if it’s got nothing to add, or to replace/improve in the original… Like the roman’s culture in our own case… So Brasil and all the others, inluding the ones we never “owned” but blended and became part of, carry on a tiny bit of us forever. Even if PT desintegrates one day… Or even today… Hence the expression “Imortal Soul”. The language, the food, the music, etc… All that lasted centuries… Cos it mixed, died and was reborn, in all levels…

I know you too invented the options trade (stock market..?)… That and using the mills to cut wood and build ships better and faster. Indeed you gave a lot to the world.

The internet was not available but to reach the 4 corners of the world was, as we did it dude, not too long before… We invented Globalization… One can say we gave “The World” to the world… Oh, the past…

As for “conquering the world”, I don’t really know what you mean… Territorialy, nobody can really assume to be in the position the english were, although much later… PT’s “empire” was somewhat of a phoenician type, nor did we have the manpower to impose it/maintain it – one of the reaosn for what distinguished us for the others – Mixing/Miscegenation. Others did it too, of course, but never at the same level… Look at Brasil… The “anti-race”, the total mixture (not as glamorous as total football, I know)… Like PT, far before, in its origins that lie deep with the mixture of arabs, jews, european catholics, kelts, “iberians”, etc… As for conquering the blog, it’s between you and Bob…

Hope you win the U21 EK! Even if to dignify PT’s defeat… Veel succes, Oranjes…! Echt!

Posted from  Netherlands

Thanks Pedro… And always keep in mind, I’m just a layman . Interested in history, culture, anthropology and all but still a average Joe Blow as they say here…

As for Calimero, you know the cartoon right? “I am small and they are big” is what he used to say. To me, it always seems the Dutch feel they are a super power. Whether it’s the G8 or that group of clubs talking to the UEFA about policy, we always feel we need to be part of that. We take ourselves very seriously in the grand scheme of world affairs, but I think we over-estimate ourselves. Politically, economically and in terms of football.

But I don’t know, maybe that’s just me. Being Dutch, I remember from my career with a huge American multinational that the Dutch always had the biggest mouths, always bended the rules and always wanted to out-perform the other countries. We felt superior. Whether it was business or football. We still think we’re the best in the world, not because we win the most cups (we don’t) but because we play the best football (we don’t).

Posted from  Australia

I thank you Jan!

I’m also a layman. I only started studying History not a long time ago. It’s not my profession. But I do like to talk about these things.

PT and NL… Small, by the ocean/sea, historically felt “the pull to go”, huge jewish influence in both our Great Ages, both understood the power of learning with what’s different. Although in different manners…

In some sort of twisted way, the Calimero Syndrome hits us all… It just shows in a different way…

ps – wanting to outperform the others is good, in my mind…
pps – of course WE play the best Footbal!!! Even if so often unefficient – we really have to learn with the italians…

Posted from  Netherlands