The Netherlands National Football Team (Dutch: Nederlands nationaal voetbalelftal) has represented the Netherlands in association football since 1905. It is controlled by the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), the governing body for football in the Netherlands.
The team is colloquially referred to as Het Nederlands Elftal (The Dutch Eleven) and Oranje, after the House of Orange-Nassau. The Dutch hold the record for playing the most World Cup finals without ever winning the final. They finished second in the 1974, 1978 and 2010 World Cups, losing to West Germany, Argentina and Spain respectively. They won the European Championship in 1988. At the peak of their success in the 1970s, the team was famous for its mastery of Total Football.
In August 2011, the team was ranked number 1 in the FIFA World Rankings, thus becoming the second national football team, after Spain, to top the rankings without previously winning a World Cup.
Read more about Netherlands National Football Team: History, Colours, Kit History, Coaching Staff, Past Managers, Individual All-time Records, Titles
Famous quotes containing the words football team, netherlands, national, football and/or team:
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.””
—Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)