Word: hollander
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...influences." John Krol of Philadelphia and the Vatican's John Wright are both "princely" and "authoritarian." The ideological bias flaws judgment in some instances. It is dubious whether Belgium's Leo Jozef Suenens was the non-Italian "front runner in the early 1970s" or that another liberal, Holland's Bernard Alfrink, will be "one of the most influential" conclave members...
...finalist, much to its own surprise, was Holland, an erratic but courageous crew much faded from its splendor of 1974, when the Dutch lit up the World Cup before losing valorously, 2-1, to the Germans in the final at Munich. The other was, and had to be, the wonderfully likable Argentine team, absent-minded on defense (as the Dutch themselves were), rough and rowdy at both ends of the field and a raging if sometimes patternless force on offense...
Each finalist faced its own certain victory (no other prospect being thinkable) in its own way. Holland, where the Argentine military regime is much despised for its violations of human rights, declined to send any officials to watch the final, though the Dutch ambassador, who had been criticized severely in his parliament for speaking up mildly for the Argentines, was to be a spectator. The Argentines, a wounded nation recovering from an undeclared civil war of hideous brutality between extreme left and extreme right, needed a celebration, and had turned the World Cup into one with a joyousness that went...
...tried to thwart an attack by lashing savagely at the ball in front of his own goal. He knocked it into the netting and in the bargain crippled his teammate, Goalie Pieter Schrijvers, who was carried off on a stretcher. The score was now Italy: one goal up, and Holland: one goalie down. That might have decided things; Italy is the kind of team that can hang on to a one-goal advantage till the next ice age. But in the second half Holland moved its star, Johan Neeskens, up from his defensive positions and threw everything into the attack...
Ironies abounded. Holland was respected, even though lacking the attacking power of Striker Johan Cruyff, who, now aged 31 and rich beyond reason, refused to bother with this World Cup. Still, the Dutch team at first was clearly not the "clockwork orange" of the 1974 tournament (orange because of its uniforms and clockwork because everything it tried worked that way until the final against West Germany). It was a Dutch concept of "total football"-no stratagem at all but a blazing and relentless rush of soccer in which every team member played both attack and defense-that had dazzled...