Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer

Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer
by David Winner

Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer
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Book Summary Information

Author: David Winner
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-29
ISBN: 1590200551
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Overlook TP

Book Reviews of Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer

Book Review: One of the best football books ever.
Summary: 5 Stars

First a list of all the things this book is not about

This won't give you all the records and statistics of Dutch football.

Doesn't have a chronological history of the game in the country. Doesn't talk in detail about all their great players, great matches or great clubs. To sum it up, this book isn't the best preparatory material for a quiz on Dutch football. You might even end up in last place.

In that sense, it is quite unlike most of the books written about a country or a club's football history and culture. In fact, the writer often goes on for pages without even talking about football, forget Dutch football. And yet, it is in my humble opinion ( as well as that of most people who write reviews on Amazon.com and [...]) quite easily the best book on Dutch football.

Because David Winner's book deals with something much more profound and goes much deeper in its investigation.

It talks about the mental makeup of the Dutch nation - why they are what they are?

It does a very good job of explaining a lot of other Dutch peculiarities - and I use that word because the Dutch are the antithesis of a conformist regular normal world. And in doing so it answers the questions about Dutch football. Why and how the Dutch came up with Total Football? Why the Dutch lose all the important matches? Why the players always get into fights? Why it is wrong to call the Netherlands the Brazil of Europe? The Dutch concept of nationalism and patriotism? And the Dutch definition of a good footballer?

If Dutch football was a living person then this book makes it very clear that the head is the most important organ; more valuable than the feet. And then it does what Freud would have tried to do - study the person's head.

And that ways, the book is very aptly named. And David Winner has written a book unlike any other.

Two of the fascinating concepts that this book deals with are individualism and space - and explains that both are as much a part of the national fabric as of their approach to football. Individualism is not the freedom to do whatever he feels like but to retain a strong sense of the self while still keeping the collective in mind. And space is to create space where there is none - something the country below sea level does on an ongoing basis.

A special mention must be made of a very fine introduction by Franklin Foer who makes a very interesting analogy that the richness of football is like a cultural Galapagos.

This book is like a fine meal. You need to eat slowly and savour every morsel. It might bore the casual fan as he looks to read about the feats of the all conquering Ajax side of the early seventies. The least he is expecting is a chapter on the three consecutive European triumphs. But all he gets is bits and pieces, here and there.

But if he can soldier on, he will have the pleasure of reading one of finest books written on football. He will see the Dutch in a new light and might just become an Oranje supporter for life (The Dutch have been one of my favourite teams but after this book, I got an Orange jersey to wear during the World Cup)

You will not win the quiz but you will surely win the paper writing competition on Dutch football.

Rating - Five out of Five all the way.

Summary of Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer

Brilliant range is a book about Dutch soccer that's not really about Dutch socer. It's more about an enigmatic way of thinking peculiar to a people whose landscape is unrelentingly flat, mostly below sea level, ad who owe their salvation to a boy who plugged a fractured dike with his little inger. If any one thing, Brilliant Orange is about Dutch space and a people whose unique conception of it has led to ome of the most enduring art, the weirdest architecture, and a bizarrely crebral form of soccer--Total Football--that led in 1974 to a World Cup finalsmatch with arch-rival Germany and more recently to a devastating loss againstSpain in 2010. With its intricacy and oddity, it continues to mystify and delght observers around the world. As David Winner wryly observes, it is an expression of the Dutch psyche that has a shaed ancestry with the Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie, Rembrandt's Th Night Watch, maybe even with Gouda cheese.

Finally here in paperbck, Brilliant Orange reaches out to the reader from an unexpected place andnever lets go.

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