The football pitch is the same size and shape everywhere in the world, yet no one else thought about football this way. So why did the Dutch? The answer may be that Dutch think innovatively, creatively and abstractly about space in their football because for centuries they have had to think innovatively about space in every other area of their lives.
Because of their strange lanscape, the Dutch are a nation of spatial neurotics. On the one hand they don’t have nearly enough of the stuff. Holland is one of the most crowded and most intensively planned landscapes on Earth. Spane is an inordinately precious commodity, and for centuries the use of every square centimetre of every Dutch city, field and polder has been carefuly considered and argued over. The land is controlled because as a matter of national survival it must be. (David Winner)
Sursa foto: visualpanic