Category Archives: Football
27 April 1941-A Regular Day During World War II in the Netherlands
The Great Bank Robbery
Although I have literally written hundreds of posts on World War II and the Holocaust, I hadn’t heard about the great bank robbery.
The bank robbery at Almelo 1944, is a bank robbery was committed by the Dutch resistance on November 15, in which 46.1 million guilders (value in 2023: €354 million) was taken. It concerned money moved from Arnhem to Almelo on behalf of Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart to end up in Germany. At the time, an NSB member worked as a director at the bank.
This robbery of thirteen cash boxes was considered the largest bank robbery in the Netherlands until well after the year 2000, and more money was involved than the well-known British train robbery. Ex-bank employee Derk Smoes, leader of the Fighting Squad in Almelo, initiated this robbery. Other members included Douwe Mik, Herman Höften, Hendrik Frielink, who survived the Neuengamme Concentration Camp, and resistance fighter Henk Bosch. It was an act of resistance for which the Dutch government had given written permission from London. The loot was intended to finance the 1944 railway strike.
The resistance had received a tip that the large sum of money was stored in the Almelo bank branch. From there, Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart wanted to have it brought to Germany. After the successful robbery, which was carried out with the approval of the Dutch government in London, there was no trace of the perpetrators.
“Wednesday, November 15, 1944, half past six in the afternoon. The bank building is closed. Then the doorbell rings. The youngest servant opens the door and immediately looks into the barrels of the pistols. Four K.P. members enter. The others keep watch outside and occupy the house above the building. The staff, who are completely surprised, raise their hands and the director (matte SS pin on his jacket!) is forced to lead the men downstairs and open the safe. “I don’t know the numerical code,” he said. But when he notices that it is serious and that refusal will cost him his life, the iron gate opens and so do the safe doors. The millions are up for grabs. The staff must pack everything into boxes. Thirteen boxes full! Meanwhile, the director puts away his SS pin. “I don’t want to annoy you with your work,” he says. After forty-five minutes (“It seemed like hours,” the robbers said later) everything above. The truck of Willem Meenks from Rijssen can drive up. The engine runs on wood gas and cuts out repeatedly. But he still manages to get the car in front of the door with the loading platform facing backwards. Just as loading is underway, the K.P. members get the fright of their lives. An entire column of Grime Polizei marches past. They still have to circle around the car because it is half on the road. One of the K.P. members gives them some guidance. But the Germans notice nothing and continue singing loudly (Auf der Heide blüht ein kleines Blümelein). Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when it all ends well. Shortly afterwards everything was loaded. Just cut the telephone wires and then drive away. But the wrong wire is cut and the alarm system starts blaring. How could it be otherwise, a small panic arises, but everyone knows what to do. The retreat does not go entirely according to plan, but during the evening the millions arrive safely in Daarle where they are temporarily stored in a haystack. A few days later the money, a total of ƒ46,150,000, was brought to Daarlerveen in two trips by horse and cart, again in a haystack. Everything went well.”
The Germans had offered 1 million guilders for the golden tip that would lead to the arrest of the bank robbers. Ultimately, the arrest of an acquaintance of the robbers, with forged identity cards in his pocket, led the Germans on the trail of the resistance group involved.
The false identification documents led to the hiding place of Derk Smoes, the ringleader of the bank robbery. He was arrested together with others involved in the robbery. The Germans proposed a compromise to Smoes: if he told them where the money was, they would not conduct any further large-scale research in the area.
Smoes, who feared that such an investigation would reveal more to the Germans than the resistance wanted, passed on the location of the money. The SD eventually found the entire amount under the hay at a farm in Daarlerveen.
Nine people were arrested and sent to Neuengamme and Reiherhorst, Reiherhorst, a wooden barracks camp within Wöbbelin Concentration Camp. Six of them had to pay for it with their lives.
Below are a few of the biographies of those involved.
Derk Smoes (Vriezenveen, 7 December 1914–Neuengamme, 14 March 1945) was a bank clerk. From July 1944, he took over the leadership of the KP (a resistance group) Almelo together with Andries Kalter. Smoes was involved in several robberies on distribution transports and the bank robbery of the Dutch Bank in Almelo. He was arrested on 30 November 1944. Smoes died on 14 March 1945 in Camp Neuengamme.
Douwe Mik (Borger, 23 May 1917–Wöbbelin, Germany, 17 April 1945) was a police officer. Mik had to go into hiding and subsequently ended up in the Twente resistance. He was involved, among other things, in the squatting of the Dutch Bank in Almelo. Mik was arrested for this and died in Wöbbelin Concentration Camp.
Herman Höften (Wierden, February 15, 1920)was a resistance fighter and politician. During the Second World War, he was affiliated with KP Almelo. He took part in the robbery of the Detention Center in Almelo and the robbery of the Dutch Bank in Almelo. Herman died in Almelo in 2007.
Berend Bruijnes (Ermelo, 6 January 1921–11 March 1945) After being imprisoned for several months in 1943 following the May strike, Berend Bruijnes (Bruintje) took over the work of his father (Arie Bruijnes) on November 25 after he was arrested for betrayal along with Jewish people in hiding. He has been involved in, among other things, distributing distribution vouchers and identity cards in the Epe and Zwolle areas. He was also part of the RVV group Epe of the Domestic Armed Forces under the command of Johannes Daamen and also provided shooting instructions. On 29 November 1944, he was arrested in Almelo in possession of blank identity cards and, after “sharpened” interrogation, was imprisoned in the Kruisberg in Doetinchem. From there he was deported to Neuengamme on 1 February 1945, and from there to Reyerhorst Concentration Camp in Wöbbelin, where he died of dysentery on March 11.
Willem Meenks (Rijssen, 20 December 1915–15 March 1945) On 5 February 1945, Willem Meenks was transported from Doetinchem to Neuengamme, where he died on 15 March 1945.
Gerardus Hendrikus Frielink (Tubbergen, 14 January 1912–28 April 1945, Auffanglager Wöbbelin) was one of the seven young men who were transported by train from the Netherlands to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp near Hamburg, on the night of February 1–2, 1945. Frielink and his brother Hendrik may not have been robbers but owners of the café of the same name in Harbrinkhoek, they had made their pub available to the gang to plan the robbery. However, it turned into a tragedy when the robbers were caught, and the Frielink brothers were also arrested by the Nazis.
The journey followed in appalling conditions, lasted almost a week in a closed wagon, after which the train arrived at Camp Neuengamme on 7 February.
“The men were desperate for water and food, but when they arrived at the camp, a reception committee of SS men and kapos (prisoners who were appointed as camp guards, etc.) was ready with clubs and eager sheepdogs,” says Krake. “After they had gone through this welcome, they received their camp number (70900 for Gerard Frielink). It was on a piece of fabric that they had to sew onto their camp clothes themselves.”
He died at the camp on April 28, 1945.
Gerhard Nijland The Twente resistance fighter Gerhard Nijland did not survive the Nazi camp Ahlem. He was buried ingloriously and under the wrong name, while his SS camp commander Otto ‘Thull’ Harder— an acclaimed professional football player—avoided the death penalty and was later buried by a guard of honour. “It is distressing,” says Gerhard’s niece.
Gerhard Nijland was involved in the 1944 robbery of De Nederlandsche Bank, in which 46 million guilders were stolen. Nijland hid the loot in the family’s haystack in Daarlerveen. The Germans were at their wits’ end and did everything they could to capture the resistance group. They arrested seven men, including Nijland. He was never heard from again.
Since Gerhard’s death, he was no longer talked about in the family. Gerie has been ordered since childhood never to talk about him. It was too painful. Because of that silence, no one in the family knew exactly what had happened to Gerhard. His father could not cope with his death and committed suicide in 1948.
In contradiction, Gerhard’s tormentor, Otto Fritz Harder, had been a German Footballer before World War II. In October 1932, following his football career, Harder ran an insurance agency and became a member of the NSDAP before joining the SS in May 1933. In August 1939, he was drafted into the Waffen-SS and served shortly at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, then at Neuengamme in Hamburg by the end of that year.[10] On 30 November 1944, Harder became an SS-Hauptscharführer and a commander (Schutzhaftlagerführer) at the Ahlem camp in Hanover. On 30 January 1945, he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer (equivalent second lieutenant). He also served as a camp commander in Uelzen, a subcamp of Neuengamme, which was evacuated under his leadership on 16–17 April due to British attacks, in which prisoners were transferred to the main camp. In May 1945, he was captured by the British military and was taken to Iserbrook. Due to health issues, he was initially released but then was arrested again.
After World War II, Harder was tried for war crimes by the British military court at the Curio house in Rotherbaum. On 6 May 1947, he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. After the trial, Hamburger SV excluded him for a short time. However, his sentence was later reduced to ten years in prison, of which he ended up serving only four years. He was released from Werl Prison before Christmas 1951. Harder later moved to Bendestorf, where he worked as an insurance agent until his death on 4 March 1956 in Hamburg.
In Frank Krake’s 2023 book, The Resistance Man and the Football Hero, the author contrasts the life of SS Camp Commandant Harder, who “created a living hell” (according to Henry Kissinger, one of the US 84th Division which liberated the Ahlen Concentration Camp), with the life of Gerhard Nijland, a Dutch resistance hero who became a prisoner in Harder’s camp. Nijland died in April 1945, five days after being liberated by the Americans, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
When the Football World Cup was held in Germany in 1974, the city of Hamburg even produced a brochure in which Harder was also honoured as one of their great football heroes. Frank Krake, “That ultimately went too far. The page was removed from the brochure at the very last minute.”
Sources
https://doetinchemherdenkt.nl/bankovervallers
https://www.oudvriezenveen.nl/dorpsgeschiedenis/bankoverval/eenstelkoelbloedigesnotneuzen
https://nos.nl/75jaarbevrijding/bericht/2313050-verzetsleden-die-bankoverval-pleegden-opgepakt
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankroof_Almelo_1944
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Jewish Footballers Murdered During the Holocaust
We are in the middle of a new UEFA Champions League season and only a few months away of UEFA Euro 2024 This inspired me to look at some players who never had a chance to play in football tournaments, either as players or coaches.
Before I go into the stories of some individual footballers, first view the context of the photograph above. Football on a Sunday afternoon in Camp Westerbork. Jewish prisoners during a football match.
The attentive spectator behind the goal is the Austrian Arthur Pisk, leader of the Order Service. A football competition between teams with Jewish prisoners in 1943 at Camp Westerbork was set up. Many of them were murdered in the extermination camps at Sobibor and Auschwitz.
Antal Vágó was a Hungarian-Jewish international footballer who played as a midfielder. Vágó played club football for MTK for twelve seasons, winning the league nine times. Vágó also played for Fővárosi TC and represented the Hungarian national team at international level, earning 17 caps between 1908 and 1917. Vágó was killed during the Holocaust, and some claim that he was shot and his body thrown into the river Danube in late 1944 along with thousands of other Budapest Jews.
Árpád Weisz, Julius Hirsch and Ron Jones
Árpád Weisz was a Hungarian Jewish football player and manager who played for Törekvés SE in his native Hungary, in Czechoslovakia for Makabi Brno, and in Italy for Alessandria and Inter Milan. Weisz was a member of the Hungarian squad at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. After retiring as a player in 1926, Weisz settled in Italy and became an assistant coach for Alessandria before moving to Inter Milan.
Weisz and his family were forced to flee Italy following the enactment of the Italian Racial Laws. They found refuge in the Netherlands, where Weisz got a coaching job with Dordrecht. In 1942, Weisz and his family were deported to Auschwitz. Weisz’s wife, Elena, and his children, Roberto and Clara, were murdered by the Nazis upon arrival. Weisz was kept alive for 18 months and exploited as a worker before his death in January 1944.
Julius Hirsch was a German-Jewish international footballer who played for the clubs SpVgg Greuther Fürth and Karlsruher FV for most of his career. He was the first Jewish player to represent the German national team, who played in seven international matches for Germany between 1911 and 1913.
He retired from football in 1923 and continued working as a youth coach for his club, KFV. Hirsch was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp on 1 March 1943. His exact date of death is unknown.
Ron Jones, known as the Goalkeeper of Auschwitz, was a British prisoner of war (POW) sent to E715 Wehrmacht British POW camp, part of the Auschwitz complex, in 1942. Jones was part of the Auschwitz Football League and was appointed goalkeeper of the Welsh team.
In 1945, Jones was forced to join the ‘death march’ of prisoners across Europe. Together with 230 other Allied prisoners, he marched 900 miles from Poland into Czechoslovakia and finally to Austria, where they were liberated by the Americans. Less than 150 men survived the death march. Jones returned to Newport after the war and was a volunteer for the Poppy Appeal for more than 30 years until his death in 2019 at the age of 102.
Hundreds of matches of soccer were played in Terezin. From 1942-1944, on an impoverished field, Jewish prisoners in Terezin organized and played matches set up in the courtyard of the barracks they lived. In the summer of 1944, the Nazis shot a propaganda film directed by Kurt Gerron. Gerron’s film was shown to the International Red Cross in late 1944, convincing the organization that there was no extermination in the camps.
The 2013 documentary film is setting out to change that. Liga Terezin was aired for the first time on Israeli television at the Holocaust Remembrance Day. It tells the story of the league through the perspective of its survivors and their relatives. The film’s backbone is extensive coverage of a game on 1 September 1944—just weeks before most players were sent to extermination camps.
Zygmunt Steuermann played for Hasmonea Lvov, one of the clubs throughout the area with Zionist foundations. He scored a hat-trick on his debut for the national team against Turkey in Lvov in 1926.
Born in Sambor, then in Austro-Hungarian Galicia, Steuermann was Jewish and a member of a Polonized Jewish family. His older brother was pianist Eduard Steuermann. His older sister was the actress and screenwriter Salka Viertel. As a child, he was nicknamed Dusko.
At the age of 12, Steuermann joined the local Korona Sambor. During World War I, he fled to Vienna, where he continued his training in a variety of sports clubs, including Gersthof Wien, Germania Wien, and Amateure Wien. After the war, he returned to Poland. In 1920, he started a semi-professional career in Korona Sambor. The following year, he moved to Lwów (modern Lviv, Ukraine), and joined the ŻKS Lwów Sports Club. In 1923, he was transferred to Hasmonea Lwów, a most important Jewish football club in Poland and one of the four Lwów-based clubs playing in the first league.[6] He remained one of the most notable players of that club until 1932 when he joined Legia Warsaw.
Steuermann also played twice in the Poland national team, scoring four goals: three in a match against Turkey in 1926 and one against the USA in 1928. He was one of only two first-timers in the history of the Poland national team to score a hat-trick in the first match, the other being Józef Korbas (in 1937 against Bulgaria).
During the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he fled Warsaw settling in his hometown, which was then annexed by the USSR. He returned to Korona Sambor, which was soon afterward closed down and recreated as Dinamo Sambor by the Soviet authorities. Following the Nazi take-over of eastern Poland, he was arrested and sent to the Lemberg Ghetto, where he died in December 1941 at the age of 42.
Sources
Liga Terezin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Steuermann
https://www.49flames.com/exhibition
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Football Heroes—PEC Zwolle
When I say football heroes, I don’t mean heroes on the pitch, scoring goals and winning matches, even though they did that too. In this case I am referring to the conduct of the whole football club.
Sunday, 22 June 1941, the same day that Germany broke the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and invaded the USSR, PEC Zwolle became champion at the post-competition. PEC became 1st with 10 points and thus, was promoted to 1st class.
Vitesse was the opponent on neutral ground, Sportpark Kerschoten in Apeldoorn. The Dutch national anthem played [banned by the Germans] sounded from thousands singing, and the enthusiasm was infectious. Eventually, the game concluded with a win 2-1, and promotion was a fact.
PEC Zwolle is a Dutch football club from Zwolle, the capital of the province of Overijssel. in the Netherlands. In 1910 the club was founded as PEC.
22 June 1941 was a very, warm day. The match took place at a temperature of 32° Celcius [90° Fahrenheit].
By 15 September 1941, Jews were no longer allowed to enter sports fields or pitches.
While almost all clubs fully collaborated with the Germans and expelled their Jewish members, PEC resisted the ordinance of the Nazi occupier. Two girls wanted to sign up as athletes at the club. Wim Peters, who had invited them to his home for a visit, soon realized what they were made of. The two NSB girls were rejected as members, as a result, the Zwolle club was dissolved at the initiative of the Sicherheits Dienst. The only other Dutch club that also showed such resistance was Unitas from Gorinchem. A prominent member of both clubs left for a concentration camp. The Zwolle club secretary Wim Peters and Huub Sterkenburg from Unitas were sent to Camp Vught (Herzogenbusch). From there he was departed to Neuengamme, where he was murdered.
Eventually, eight PEC Zwolle players would die because of the war. These were G. de Groot, N.M. Koper, C. Masseus, M. Veterman, J. Veterman, E. Veterman, M. Veterman, and H. Zilverberg.
The photograph at the top of this piece was the team of the 1940/41 season. Unfortunately, I am not able to find the names of the players.
sources
https://www.wikiwand.com/nl/PEC_in_het_seizoen_1940/41
Gejus van der Meulen—From Sporting Hero to Nazi Villain
The Netherlands has produced some of the greatest football players in the world. The Dutch are proud of their footballing history. My hometown of Geleen is where Dutch professional football originated.
However, there are some football stars we are not proud of.
Gejus van der Meulen was a goalkeeper of HFC and the Dutch national team. In 1940 he became a member of the NSB and joined the SS-Feldlazarett Freiwilligen (Medical Volunteers) Legion Niederlande, after which he went to the Eastern Front in 1942.
Van der Meulen played 54 matches for the Netherlands national football team, which was the Dutch record for goalkeepers from 3 March 1928 (when he equalled the total of Just Göbel) until 21 June 1990 (when his total was surpassed by Hans van Breukelen). He made his debut on 27 April 1924 against Belgium. He played in the 1934 FIFA World Cup, where the Netherlands was eliminated in the first round against Switzerland. He also took part in two Olympic Games, in 1924 and 1928. He was a club player of HFC in Haarlem, the oldest club in the Netherlands.
Van der Meulen’s popularity in the Netherlands was such that his wedding made the Polygoon newsreel. Footage also exists of a celebration ceremony for Van der Meulen on 5 March 1933, the day he gained his 50th cap.
In 1935, Van der Meulen retired from competitions and opened a pediatric clinic in Haarlem. He joined the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands and openly supported Hitler’s compulsory sterilization laws. His views were strongly opposed by the parents of the children he treated, forcing him to close his clinic.
A friend of Gejus said that the once-Dutch goalkeeper had proclaimed the beauty of the Nazis’ sterilization laws. “We, doctors, are fighting for a healthy human race. Now Hitler says we have to intervene in the risk of unhealthy children.”
Gejus, however, wanted more than just being a member of the NSB, and in 1941 he joined the SS Vrijwilligers Legioen Nederland (Dutch Volunteer Legion). The SS oath read as follows:
“I vow to you Adolf Hitler, as Fuhrer and Chancellor of the German Reich, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and to the leaders you set me, absolute allegiance until death. So help me God.”
He was arrested four days after the liberation of the Netherlands and tried in June 1947. He showed no remorse and stated that he did not know that the Netherlands was at war with Germany when he joined the SS. Van der Meulen was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was pardoned in August 1949. He tried to get his medical practice back off the ground, but no patients wanted to be treated by a known Nazi collaborator. In the end, he ended up exclusively treating former members of the NSB. Later he contacted his former club HFC to see if he could get a place for his son in the academy. His request was ignored.
I know some people will say “He wasn’t the worst of them. he was only a medic” and they might be from the opinion that he was treated harshly. But, he was an educated man who had pledged a vow and allegiance—not only to the enemy—but, also to the most evil man on the planet. Technically he committed treason which was punishable by death.
sources
https://geschiedenislokaal023.nl/bronnen/gejus-van-der-meulen
https://www.thesoccerworldcups.com/players/gejus_van_der_meulen.php
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Burnden Park Disaster
When you hear about football tragedies, you might think about something like Manchester United being beaten 7-0 by Liverpool, but not about a great number of casualties among supporters.
Yet there have been dozens of football disasters with a great number of deaths. One I hadn’t heard of before is the Burnden Park disaster. Thirty-three people were crushed to death at Bolton Wanderers’ Burnden Park on 9 March 1946. The match, an FA Cup Sixth Round second-leg tie between Bolton and Stoke City
Bolton took a 2-0 lead from the first leg back to Burnden Park where it was estimated that 85,000 spectators attended—15,000 over the capacity.
It was estimated that the crowd was in excess of 85,000 people. The entrance to the Bolton end of the ground, which had no roof, was from the Manchester Road end only. The disaster happened at the Railway End of the ground where, in common with many other post-war grounds, facilities were rudimentary.
As the Railway End of the ground filled, a decision was taken at approximately 2:40 pm to close the turnstiles. However, the pressure inside the stand caused a crush.
Phyllis Robb was among them. As the crush began to be felt, she was photographed being lifted to safety and passed over the heads of the rest of the fans.
Now aged 101, she remembers it well. “I can remember barriers breaking down and they were all rushing out—and they put me like that.” She said she was not scared of the crush, adding, “I was more bothered about my father because he was still on the ground.”
The disaster was the result of a perfect storm. In 1946, the FA Cup was the first competitive football played since the end of World War Two.
After a six-year absence from top-flight football, the fans were eager to flock to games especially as Bolton was the only team playing in Lancashire that day. An added attraction was Sir Stanley Matthews, one of the game’s greatest stars, who was lining up for Stoke. Fans from opposite ends had to use the same turnstiles because parts of the ground that had been requisitioned for wartime storage were not returned to full use.
Other supporters had to pass the same area on their way to a separate terrace creating a bottleneck. The gates were shut 20 minutes before the kick-off as fans crammed into the ground but things got worse behind a goal when a gate at the rear of the stand was opened.
Some accounts say it was forced open by fans trying to get in while others say a father picked open a lock from within to escape the crush with his son. Whatever the truth, shortly after kick-off two barriers gave way at the Embankment End and the huge crowd fell forward crushing those in front.
The play was initially stopped but resumed with bodies laid out behind the goal. With the game ending goalless. The disaster brought about the Moelwyn Hughes report, which recommended more rigorous control of crowd sizes.
SOURCES
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-35697169
https://www.workingwithcrowds.com/1946-burnden-park-disaster/
https://archive.ph/20130505113812/http://bolton.vitalfootball.co.uk/sitepage.asp?a=234384
The History of Football
Now that the FIFA World cup is well on its way, it might be a good time to have a look at the history of Football.
I will be referring to the sport as Football and not soccer, because the name is Associated Football. It is one of the most if not the most popular sports in the world. More than 240 million people around the world play soccer regularly according to the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
The first known examples of a team game involving a ball, which was made out of a rock, occurred in old Mesoamerican cultures for over 3,000 years ago. It was by the Aztecs called Tchatali, although various versions of the game were spread over large regions. In some ritual occasions, the ball would symbolize the sun and the captain of the losing team would be sacrificed to the gods. A unique feature of the Mesoamerican ball game versions was a bouncing ball made of rubber – no other early culture had access to rubber.
The first known ball game which also involved kicking took place In China in the third and second century BC under the name Cuju. Cuju was played with a round ball (stitched leather with fur or feathers inside) on an area of a square.
A modified form of this game later spread to Japan and was by the name of kemari practiced under ceremonial forms.
Perhaps even older Cuju was Marn Gook, played by Aboriginal Australians and according to white emigrants in the 1800s a ball game primarily involving kicking. The ball was made by encased leaves or roots. The rules are mostly unknown, but as with many other early versions of the game keeping the ball in the air was probably a chief feature.
There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit in Greenland. There are later accounts of an Inuit game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team’s line and then at a goal. In 1610, William Strachey, a colonist at Jamestown, Virginia recorded a game played by Native Americans, called Pahsaheman. Pasuckuakohowog, a game similar to modern-day association football played amongst Amerindians, was also reported as early as the 17th century.
In the 16th century, the city of Florence celebrated the period between Epiphany and Lent by playing a game which today is known as “calcio storico” (“historic kickball”) in the Piazza Santa Croce. [45] The young aristocrats of the city would dress up in fine silk costumes and embroil themselves in a violent form of football. For example, calcio players could punch, shoulder charge, and kick opponents. Blows below the belt were allowed. The game is said to have originated as a military training exercise.
But football as we know it today has its roots in 19th century England.
An attempt to create proper rules for the game was done at a meeting in Cambridge in 1848, but a final solution to all questions of rules was not achieved. Another important event in the history of football came about in 1863 in London when the first Football association was formed in England. It was decided that carrying the ball with the hands wasn’t allowed. The meeting also resulted in a standardization of the size and weight of the ball. A consequence of the London meeting was that the game was divided into two codes: association football and rugby.
In Europe, early footballs were made out of animal bladders, more specifically pig’s bladders, which were inflated. Later leather coverings were introduced to allow the balls to keep their shape. However, in 1851, Richard Lindon and William Gilbert, both shoemakers from the town of Rugby (near the school), exhibited both round and oval-shaped balls at the Great Exhibition in London. Richard Lindon’s wife is said to have died of lung disease caused by blowing up pig’s bladders. Lindon also won medals for the invention of the “Rubber inflatable Bladder” and the “Brass Hand Pump”.
In 1855, the U.S. inventor Charles Goodyear, who had patented vulcanised rubber , exhibited a spherical football, with an exterior of vulcanised rubber panels, at the Paris Exhibition Universelle. The ball was to prove popular in early forms of football in the U.S.
The iconic ball with a regular pattern of hexagons and pentagons (see truncated icosahedron) did not become popular until the 1960s, and was first used in the World Cup in 1970.
Clubs in Sheffield played a significant role in the development of the rules of football, leading to how the modern game is played today. The Sheffield Rules were devised by the Sheffield Football Club and played in the city between 1857 and 1877. As a result, corner kicks, throw-ins, and heading the ball were introduced into Sheffield football before Association Football rules.
On 28 October 1858, Sheffield Football Club’s first rules of football were ratified at a general meeting at the Adelphi Hotel. As well as creating Sheffield FC, Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest was instrumental in setting up the rules that they adhered to. Sheffield FC’s first set of rules featured the following features:
A player cannot touch the ball with his hands, except when pushing or hitting it, and when a fair catch is made. Kicking, tripping, and holding opponents (foul play) were forbidden, but charging and pushing were permitted. A fair catch resulted in a free kick, but the free kick could not lead to a goal. In 1858, a goal could only be scored by kicking it. Throw-ins are awarded to teams that touch the ball after it has left play. In order to throw the ball in, it must be thrown at a right angle to the touchline.
There was a “kick-out” (goal kick) from 25 yards when the ball went out of play over the goal-line. Offside laws did not exist. The numbers on each side were not dictated by the Sheffield rules. Over the 20 years, these Sheffield rules were updated after each season until the Sheffield Association and the London-based FA came to a head in 1877.
The world’s first competitive inter-club match between Hallam FC and Sheffield FC in 1860 and the world’s first football tournament, the Youdan Cup, were played according to the Sheffield Rules. Following the 1860 Boxing Day derby between Hallam and Sheffield, players and committee members retired to The Plough pub for much-needed refreshments.
As the sport developed, more rules were implemented and more historical landmarks were set. For example, the penalty kick was introduced in 1891. FIFA became a member of the International Football Association Board of Great Britain in 1913. Red and yellow cards were introduced during the 1970 World Cup finals. More recent major changes include goalkeepers being banned from handling deliberate back passes in 1992 and tackles from behind becoming red-card penalties in 1998.
Some of the top players throughout history include Pele (Edson Arantes Do Nascimento) from Brazil, who scored six goals in the 1958 World Cup and helped Brazil claim its first title; Lev Yashin from Russia, who claimed to have saved more than 150 penalty shots during his outstanding goal-tending career; and Marco Van Basten from the Netherlands who won several very prestigious soccer awards during one year alone.
I know the current world cup is highly politicized and I do believe awarding the world cup to Qatar was probably the biggest mistake in the history of FiFa However setting the politics aside, it is still enjoyable to watch the matches, and surprises like Saudi Arabia beating Argentina and Japan beating Germany only add to the charm of the game
Despite all the controversy it is great to see some fans displaying the best of behaviour, like the Japanese supporters cleaning up after the match.
sources
https://www.footballhistory.org/
https://www.britannica.com/story/is-it-really-dangerous-to-swim-after-eating
https://www.bundesliga.com/en/faq/all-you-need-to-know-about-soccer/the-history-of-soccer-10560
https://historyofsoccer.info/rules-of-football
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/63735823
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Dutch Football During World War II
We are less than a month away from the Fifa Worldcup. The selection of Qatar as the host nation is, to use an understatement, controversial. But I hope it will do some good.
I was wondering though about the history of Dutch football and especially the World War II years, the national competition didn’t halt. Would that have been seen as controversial at the time?
The Second World War was not the death blow for it Dutch football. The numbers show just the opposite: as the occupation continued, both the active and passive interest in sports in general and especially football grew
For example, the number of members of the NVB (The name of the Dutch football association is KNVB-K standing for Koninklijke as in Royal. the occupying forces forbade the royal honorific) clearly saw the growth during the war years.
Below are just some impressions of Dutch football between 1940 and 1945.
The Heracles team won a 6-1 victory against PSV and thus conquered the championship of the Netherlands. Netherlands, Almelo, July 1941 .
Competition match, season 1941-1942, ADO-Feyenoord (result 3-0), The Hague, Netherlands 1942. Photo: ADO goalkeeper Willem Koek, the arbitral trio, and Feyenoord captain Bas Paauwe during the pre-match toss.
First-class division 2, 1940/1941 season, Ajax – Blauw Wit (result 2-1). A game moment in front of Ajax’s goal, the goalkeeper [Gerrit Keizer] punches the ball away. Stadium de Meer Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 23, 1941.
Competition match season 1941-1942, ADO-DWS (result 1-0), The Hague, Netherlands 1941-1942. Photo: ADO goalkeeper Willem Koek punches the ball next to the goal.
The Be-Quick team was being honored in connection with promotion to the first division. Netherlands, Zutphen, 25 May 1944.
The champion team of ADO among the enthusiastic supporters after their victory over Feyenoord (3-0) in the Netherlands, The Hague, 1942.
sources
https://www.nieuws030.nl/achtergrond-1940-1945/sport-in-de-oorlog/
Happy Birthday Eddy Hamel—American Soccer Player Murdered in Auschwitz
I have done a piece on Eddy Hamel before, but for two reasons I wanted to do a post again about him. Firstly it is his 120th birthday today, secondly, we are only a few weeks away from the FIFA World Cup, the biggest tournament of the sport he loved so much.
He was born in New York City. He was Jewish, as were his parents who were immigrants from the Netherlands. He moved to Amsterdam in his teenage years. In 1928 he married Johanna Wijnberg, and in 1938 they had twin boys, Paul and Robert.
Eddy Hamel was the first Jewish player, and also the first American, to play for Ajax in Amsterdam. Prior to Ajax he played for Amsterdamsche FC (AFC). His first acquaintance with Ajax was a special one. The training fields of AFC and Ajax were next to each other and Hamel had broken a window of an Ajax changing room while in a rowdy mood. The groundskeeper did not take it kindly and gave the boy an earful. In 1922 Hamel became the first Jewish player at Ajax and the first American at one of Europe’s most famous football clubs. The Ajax supporters—at the time also largely with a Jewish background—quickly embraced him.
Hamel became a first-team regular for Ajax. To date, only four other Jewish soccer players have followed in his footsteps – Johnny Roeg, Bennie Muller, Sjaak Swart, and Daniël de Ridder. Hamel was a fan favourite and was cited by pre-World War II club legend Wim Anderiesen as part of the strongest line-up he ever played with. He had his fan club in the 1920s, which would line up on his side of the field at the beginning of every game, and then switch sides to be on his side of the field in the second half. After his retirement as a player, Hamel managed Alcmaria Victrix for three years and continued to play in an Ajax veteran squad.
Hamel, his wife and their sons lived across town at the time, in a second-floor flat at 145 Rijnstraat, not far from where 13-year-old Anne Frank and her family lived. In apparent defiance of the Nazis’ rules, Hamel continued to play for his old club’s alumni team, Lucky Ajax, during the German occupation.
On Oct. 27, 1942, Hamel was stopped by two officers from the Jewish Affairs division of the Amsterdam Police Department, which had turned compliant with the Nazis. The arrest report, written in German, states that Hamel told his captors he was born in New York. He gave “coach” as his profession. As for the reason for his arrest: He’d been caught in public sich ohne judenstern—without his Jewish star. Despite his American citizenship, Hamel was detained by the Nazis because he was a Jew.
Eddy and his family had to report to Westerbork. They ended up in the so-called ‘English Barrack’. Here were British and American citizens who were eligible for exchange. But that status turned out to offer no protection either. Leon Greenman, who was in the same barracks, spent the last few months with Eddy. Both their families were deported to Auschwitz in January 1943, where the women and children were immediately murdered. Both men were to work.
Eddy spent four months doing hard labour at Birkenau. After he was found to have a swollen mouth abscess during a Nazi inspection, the Nazis sent him to the gas chambers in Auschwitz concentration camp on April 30, 1943, where they murdered him.
I don’t know if this was the case but I think it is safe to assume that Eddy would have watched matches of the young talent at Ajax. I have no doubt that he would have enjoyed the talent of Rinus Michels, who played for the youth team in Ajax in 1940/1941. Rinus Michels went on to become the most successful manager of the Dutch national team, with whom he won the European title in 1988.
sources
Eddy Hamel
History of Sorts 
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