Monday, April the 29th, 2013
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There is a Dutch word . . . verongelijktheid, to be wronged, not by an individual so much as by the world at large. You often see it in the way the much-heralded national team plays soccer.
Proud of their superior skills, their multicultural makeup, the almost mocking manner of their free-flowing play, maddening the players of more prosaic teams, like Germany, the stars of Dutch soccer usually start their games with all the swagger of swinging Amsterdam. In their playful individualism, their progressive daringness, they know they are the best. And sometimes they are. But when things go against them and the plodding Germans, or the bloody-minded Italians, or the cussed English, go up a goal or two, the heads slump, the bickering starts, and the game is lost in a sour mood of verongelijktheid. Why did this have to happen to us? What did we do to deserve this? Aren't we the best? Well, fuck you!
Ian Buruma, Murder In Amsterdam : The Death Of Theo Van Gogh And The Limits Of Tolerance (2006)