ABSTRACT
Since 1905, the Netherlands has fielded a national football team and they have provided some of the most exciting and inspiring matches played anywhere in the world. The team is adored and venerated by their fans as the ‘Oranje’, in honour of the House of William I of the House of Orange who led the Netherlands fight for independence against Spain in 1568.1 Even though the Netherlands is geographically a small nation with a population of only roughly 17 million, the fact is that the Oranje have overachieved on football’s largest stages – the FIFA World Cup and the European Championships. The Dutch have been at the doorstep of winning soccer’s grandest prize – The World Cup – more than any other nation in the history of the competition, but they have never won the title. The Netherlands lost in the World Cup final to West Germany in 1974, to Argentina in 1978 and to Spain in 2010. Despite the lack of a World Cup championship, the Netherlands has achieved many other successes in international football. They won the European Championship in 1988 and, despite finishing as runner-up in the 2010 World Cup, they still topped the FIFA global football rankings in 2011. Professional football clubs from the Netherlands have also excelled in international competitions; since its inception in 1955, clubs from the Netherlands have won the European Cup five times (Ajax in 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1995, and PSV Eindhoven in 1988).
