Charles de Gaulle once described the Dutch lowlands as an aberration of history - a region that should have been swallowed up by either France or Germany but for some inexplicable reason wasn't. Ajax and Feyenoord say that their inability to compete internationally is an aberration of the market - that the TV revenue generated by the Eredivisie is too low to allow them to operate properly. The former statement has far more credence than the latter.
Yes, a single Premier League club can earn as much from television rights as the entire Eredivisie combined, but that's not the reason Ajax and Feyenoord have disappeared from football's elite. Over the past couple of decades PSV Eindhoven have developed a business plan that has allowed them to compete both domestically and internationally. How? By spending smarter, not more. They have signed players primarily from under-scouted regions thus keeping transfer fees low. This low risk, high return approach has netted PSV many millions in transfer profits.
Other Dutch clubs have copied this approach and have similarly enjoyed great success, reducing the gap between the Big Three and all the rest. In the past 15 years Heervenveen signed Jon Dahl Tomasson, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Klaas Jan Huntelaar, Georgios Samaras, Afonso Alves and Miralem Sulejmani for a combined €6.61m (£5.25m approx) and sold them for €61.1m (£48.5m approx). A great fortune can be made by buying obscure players or recycling bigger clubs' cast-offs.
The only two clubs not adopting this strategy are Ajax and Feyenoord - and it shows. The two crippled themselves with a never-ending series of imprudent and pricey transfers and find themselves having to spend even more just to stay afloat. Feyenoord's cash has already run out and they have sunk to 13th place in the Eredivisie. If Ajax don't return to winning ways - and the Champions League next year - they could soon follow.
On Sunday Ajax eventually broke through a sturdy Vitesse defence to win 3-0, thanks largely to an especially impressive performance from the 21-year-old defensive midfielder Eyong Enoh, who is hailed as the reincarnation of Claude Makelele. "Every time [his opponent] wanted to receive the ball … he found his guard Enoh in the way," wrote Geert Langendorff in the Dutch newspaper Trouw.
The Ajax striker Luis Suárez was less worthy of applause. Although he scored another marvellous goal, the talented Uruguayan also has a flair for fainting in the penalty area and his reputation is now so bad that he was denied an actual penalty against Feyenoord last Saturday. Against Vitesse he decided to grab an opponent's leg after having gone to ground and then pretended to have been hit in the face when the leg attempted to jerk itself free. He was lucky to escape with a yellow card.
That wasn't quite the dumbest moment of the weekend, however. That accolade went to NEC's Joël Tshibamba, who took off his shirt after opening the scoring against Heracles Almelo on Sunday and earned his second yellow card of the match. It was the second time this season that a NEC player had been sent off for taking off his shirt after Rutger Worm did exactly the same thing in week one. This time, an understaffed NEC went on to concede the equaliser in the 89th minute. "This is ridiculous," said the NEC manager Mario Been. "Think and keep your shirt on."
On Saturday, PSV created chance after chance against Volendam and their portly goalkeeper Jeroen Verhoeven, a man who looks more like a professional darts player than a footballer. But Verhoeven held up remarkably well and kept a clean sheet for 73 minutes until PSV finally broke through and Stijn Wuytens scored the only goal of the match. "When you dominate the way we did you have to score goals," said the PSV manager Huub Stevens.
"Groningen have a better team than Feyenoord," warned the pundit Johan Derksen before the two teams met – and so it proved. The Feyenoord defender Kevin Hofland was sent off after 10 minutes, although Groningen's Goran Lovre had been spared that same fate minutes earlier after a dangerous tackle. Feyenoord were reduced to damage-control and did well to escape with a 3-1 defeat, grateful to the tireless midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum, who could well be the next Clarence Seedorf.
Groningen's opening goal came direct from a free kick and some cunning play from Sepp de Roover, who waited for the Feyenoord wall to jump in unison before sliding the ball into the bottom corner. "We'd all agreed that we'd jump," said Roy Makaay. "It's pretty obvious that we won't be jumping anymore."
NAC Breda, who are masters at getting the best out of otherwise unwanted footballers, pummelled a previously impressive Heerenveen 4-2 in one of those matches that makes Dutch football so exciting. The Ajax reject Martijn Reuser scored the opening goal, the Feyenoord-outcast Anthony Lurling the second, and the Dortmund outcast Matthew Amoah the third and fourth. Amoah now heads the scoring chart with six goals.
Louis van Gaal's resurgent AZ Alkmaar coasted to a 5-2 win against Willem II, with Mounir El Hamdaoui scoring a hat-trick against his former club, despite being booed by the crowd. But despite El Hamdaoui's triumphant return to Tilburg, the night belonged to the AZ striker Moussa Dembélé who dribbled past seven men to score a wonderful goal and reaffirm his status as world-class striker in training. "He didn't quite walk on water, but it was pretty close," the commentator cooed. "It was just a good goal," said a modest Dembélé. "I don't think it was luck."
Steve McClaren's second straight win with FC Twente wasn't quite so pretty. They beat the lowly De Graafschap 3-0 in what was an unwatchable match, like most of Twente's recent outings. But the side are looking increasingly solid and a return of eight points from four matches, good for fourth place, is impressive.
Results PSV 1-0 FC Volendam, NAC 4-2 Heerenveen, Willem II 2-5 AZ, FC Twente 3-0 De Graafschap, FC Groningen 3-1 Feyenoord, Ajax 3-0 Vitesse, NEC 1-1 Heracles, ADO Den Haag 0-0 FC Utrecht, Sparta 2-2 Roda JC.
