Brilliant Orange

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

Finally here in paperback, Brilliant Orange reaches out to the reader from an unexpected place and never lets go.

Part of the problem is that David Winner at times does too much telling rather than showing. One of the earlier reviewers remarked that access to video footage would be helpful. I agree, especially when Winner just keeps telling the reader how brilliant and beautiful the Dutch playing style is without much description beyond those mere adjectives. On the other hand, there are sections where the description is quite vivid, like that of the Cruyff turn. But it still falls a bit short. This book would work much much better as a documentary. Or at least there could have been greater and better use of pictures and illustrations.

Another problem on the strategy front is when Winner tries to stretch certain ideas to the absolute limit. At one point he concludes that a player's ability to curl the ball on a free kick made the defensive wall useless in such a situation. Winner fails to notice that if the wall wasn't there, someone else would blast the ball straigth through to goal. When you're forced to pick your poison with let's say Real Madrid, surely you'd rather let Beckham curl it rather than give Roberto Carlos a direct shot. A few of Winner's exasperating conclusions almost made me give up on the book.

Luckily, for the most part, I continued reading. Despite my disappointments, the book does provide fascinating observations on Dutch history, culture, people, architecture, etc. and how they all relate to soccer. One of my favorite chapters was the one about Ajax and its Jewish links; I wish I knew about this when I was traveling in Amsterdam. Sometimes, though, the material gets a bit too academic, more in terms of writing style than analytical rigor - I could really do without the commentary from Uri Geller, puh-leez.

Overall, if you're a serious fan of soccer, this book's worth a read, in part because (aside from instructional material) there's very little of quality out there on this sport. I guess I've been spoiled by all the good baseball literature.


Neurotic genius   March 1, 2003
Entertaining book. You gotta be a big soccer fan, with some sense of the history of the game to enjoy it, but if you are...


Well-Written and Thoughtful Look at Total Football   December 27, 2002
Make no mistake, this is a book about Dutch football-however, what makes it of at least passable interest to non-football fans is how Winner ranges into Dutch history, politics, art, architecture, and psychology in his attempt to explain why Dutch football is so different. In that sense, the book is quite a bit more "highbrow" than most. After starting with a brief history of Dutch soccer, Winner plunges full into the Dutch glory days of the late '60s to late '70s, when "total football" was king and Johan Cruyff was its master. The book's central idea is to try and suggest similarities between aspects of Dutch football and aspects of Dutch life, which when looked at together reveal something of the Dutch national character.

For example, one of these linkages is the shared timeframe for the birth of modern Dutch football and the progressive globalist nature of Holland, as exemplified by Amsterdam as we think of it now. Another is the lack of "killer instinct" or "win at all costs" mentalities (as evidenced by the national team's historical failure to win the big games), in favor or a more aesthetic mentality that values style or beauty over results. A third example is his discussion of the tension between society/team as a whole, and the individual/star. Winner splits his time between history and analysis (often very insightful), and interviews with former players, coaches, and non-football academic specialists and art critics. There are great tidbits here and there, such as a chapter about the Ajax club and why many of its supporters wave Israeli flags, which is intertwined with a capsule history of Dutch collaboration with Nazi occupiers and the Dutch collective memory of the war.

Lots of neat stuff here, but it's a little hard to get into without having access to video (or at least memories) of some of the pivotal games under discussion, such as the 1974 and 1978 World Cup finals. Winner can explain the "total football" concept as eloquently as possible (which he does), but I think you have to see it to "get" it. And in that sense, the book is a little bit of a failure. Maybe one day it can be reissued with a companion DVD?