A national disaster struck last Saturday: Ireland 1 – Holland 0, ended Dutch World Cup dreams. Foreign students will miss out on Orange Mania, the good-natured madness that sweeps the country during international tournaments.
Football though does say much about the nation’s character.
Holland’s elimination from next year’s World Cup was bad news for the TU’s foreign students, who will now never experience the joys of Orange Mania. Unlike the English, whose idea of football fun is downing 18 pints of lager before breakfast and then destroying cities and towns, football helps the Dutch loosen up. Normally a sober, reserved people, Orange Mania brings out their exhibitionist party animal side and they literally paint their towns and themselves orange. The Dutch ‘Lion is lose’, as they say, drunkenly dancing through the streets wearing wooden shoes and orange Afro wigs, singing Oranje boven (Orange on top).
Perhaps no group is more depressed by Holland’s defeat than the TU’s (male) student body. The World Cup was a great excuse for frat boy’s to party hardy and turn their fraternities into orange bastions of national pride.
But, alas, there will be no Orange Mania now, no all-day parties for foreign students to join. Delft won’t be as much fun next summer, but at least TU Delft’s collective grade-point average should rise.
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Football in the Netherlands reveals this to foreigners: The business of the Netherlands is business. The national team, known as Oranje BV (Orange Inc), generates huge profits for Dutch companies. Appropriately, De Volkrant’s front-page article after Holland’s defeat bemoaned Orange BV’s devaluation from ‘Grade-A to Grade-B product’. Dutch businesses are projected to lose between 15 and 25 billion guilders. And, lets not forget the poor TU’s faculties, with no more internal betting pools to brighten up their days.
The Dutch media is straining to answer the Billion-Dollar Question: How could the talented Dutch lose to the lowly Irish? Answer: Holland was 11 individual players in search of a team. Indeed, foreign students will also discover an increasingly individualistic nation, its renowned social cohesion being unraveled by the ‘Me Generation’, evil spawn of imported US-style capitalism.
Foreign observers of Dutch football were also puzzled by the peculiar workings of Dutch logic, which to foreign minds often seems illogical. A case in point being Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, the top-scorer in Portugal, Spain and England during the past five years. Football is about scoring goals, but Dutch logic decreed that Hasselbaink didn’t fit the Dutch ‘system’. Consequently, Hasselbaink, the most prolific scorer in European football, spent most of his national team career on the reserve’s bench
Logical or illogical, win or lose, foreigners looking to prosper here take note, the Dutch %like Frank Sinatra%always do it their way.
A national disaster struck last Saturday: Ireland 1 – Holland 0, ended Dutch World Cup dreams. Foreign students will miss out on Orange Mania, the good-natured madness that sweeps the country during international tournaments. Football though does say much about the nation’s character.
Holland’s elimination from next year’s World Cup was bad news for the TU’s foreign students, who will now never experience the joys of Orange Mania. Unlike the English, whose idea of football fun is downing 18 pints of lager before breakfast and then destroying cities and towns, football helps the Dutch loosen up. Normally a sober, reserved people, Orange Mania brings out their exhibitionist party animal side and they literally paint their towns and themselves orange. The Dutch ‘Lion is lose’, as they say, drunkenly dancing through the streets wearing wooden shoes and orange Afro wigs, singing Oranje boven (Orange on top).
Perhaps no group is more depressed by Holland’s defeat than the TU’s (male) student body. The World Cup was a great excuse for frat boy’s to party hardy and turn their fraternities into orange bastions of national pride.
But, alas, there will be no Orange Mania now, no all-day parties for foreign students to join. Delft won’t be as much fun next summer, but at least TU Delft’s collective grade-point average should rise.
Commercial
Football in the Netherlands reveals this to foreigners: The business of the Netherlands is business. The national team, known as Oranje BV (Orange Inc), generates huge profits for Dutch companies. Appropriately, De Volkrant’s front-page article after Holland’s defeat bemoaned Orange BV’s devaluation from ‘Grade-A to Grade-B product’. Dutch businesses are projected to lose between 15 and 25 billion guilders. And, lets not forget the poor TU’s faculties, with no more internal betting pools to brighten up their days.
The Dutch media is straining to answer the Billion-Dollar Question: How could the talented Dutch lose to the lowly Irish? Answer: Holland was 11 individual players in search of a team. Indeed, foreign students will also discover an increasingly individualistic nation, its renowned social cohesion being unraveled by the ‘Me Generation’, evil spawn of imported US-style capitalism.
Foreign observers of Dutch football were also puzzled by the peculiar workings of Dutch logic, which to foreign minds often seems illogical. A case in point being Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, the top-scorer in Portugal, Spain and England during the past five years. Football is about scoring goals, but Dutch logic decreed that Hasselbaink didn’t fit the Dutch ‘system’. Consequently, Hasselbaink, the most prolific scorer in European football, spent most of his national team career on the reserve’s bench
Logical or illogical, win or lose, foreigners looking to prosper here take note, the Dutch %like Frank Sinatra%always do it their way.
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