If you’ve been listening to the daily World Cup Buzz Podcast since it debuted in mid May, you’ll know how frustrated Richard, Laurence and Kartik have been with the performance by the Netherlands team. And I echo the same concerns. The team has achieved so much to get to the final and has shown flashes of brilliance along the way, but it’s not the type of Dutch team that is going to win games in a beautiful manner.

So, I thought it’d be a good idea to delve into the archives and to find some examples of how the Dutch teams of the past tantalized us with their incredible skill and attacking prowess. I’ve compiled a collection of videos from the 1974 and 1978 World Cup tournaments as well as one from the 1988 European Championship.

Here they are:

1974 World Cup tournament

This was the one where the Netherlands should have won the World Cup. With a team featuring stars such as Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens, Ruud Krol, Johnny Rep, Wim Suurbier, Rene van der Kerkhof and many others. They played a brand of soccer called Total Football, which was built on the premise that a player who moves out of position is replaced by another member of the team, thus retaining the team’s intended organizational structure.

Netherlands made it through to the final of the 1974 World Cup where they played host country West Germany. Within the first few minutes of the game, the English referee Jack Taylor awarded a penalty to Netherlands – the first penalty ever awarded in a World Cup Final. However, Taylor was criticized for failing to hand out yellow cards to German players who committed several serious fouls on Dutch players. The only German that day to be yellow carded was Berti Vogts in relation to the first penalty called in the game.

1978 World Cup tournament

Agonizing for the Dutch, they made it through to the 1978 World Cup Final and almost won the game when in the final minute of regulation time, Rob Rensenbrink hit the post. If the ball had gone in, the Netherlands would have won the 1978 World Cup. Instead, the game went into extra time and Argentina grabbed two late goals to win it 3-1.

1988 European Championship

Holland’s Total Football was long gone, but the 1988 Dutch team featured a stellar side of players including Ruud Gullit (with long hair), Marco van Basten and Ronald Koeman. This was a side that was not at the level of 1974 or 1978, but the Netherlands still went on to win the 1988 European Championship with one of the goals of the century courtesy of van Basten.

EPL Talk recently had the chance to interview one of the Liverpool legends, Jan Molby, when he was in New York City to attend an event sponsored by the Liverpool FC New York Supporters Club.

Jan Molby was a legend at Liverpool and played at the club from 1984 to 1996, making more than 211 appearances in the red and white. At the Reds, he won two league titles, two FA Cups and three Charity Shields. Before joining Liverpool, Molby played at Ajax alongside Johan Cruyff.

During the interview, I asked Jan several questions about topics including:

• Why Liverpool is in such poor and inconsistent form this season,
• What it was like to play alongside Johan Cruyff,
• His memories of the first Liverpool FC match he played,
• Whether he sees parallels between the way that Ajax played and how Arsenal play now,
• His memories of that wonderful goal for Liverpool against Manchester United in the 1985 Milk Cup,
• The rivalry between Denmark and Holland – who will be facing each other in World Cup 2010,
• Favorite memories of Kenny Dalglish,
• And much more.

Thanks to the Liverpool FC New York Supporters Club for making the interview possible. If you’re a Reds fan and you live in the northeast United States, learn more about joining the club at http://lfcny.org. And no matter where you live in the world, be sure to check out their highly-recommended podcast, MP Red, which includes a feature-length interview with Molby.

Don’t forget that the EPL Talk Podcast is the only Premier League interview and analysis podcast available for free. In the past few weeks, we’ve interviewed legends of the game such as Steve McManaman, Efan Ekoku, Martin Chivers and Robbie Earle as well as experts such as Declan Hill, Simon Kuper, Misha Sher, Matt Dickinson and many others. Why pay $40 a year to rival podcasts when you can subscribe to the EPL Talk Podcast for FREE featuring interviews with the biggest names in football?

Yesterday, I looked at the expectations we often place on international football. This got me thinking about the Dutch and their legendary Total Football era in the 70s. What does this mean to us today? Does Cruyff’s legacy still influence world football?

What do we want from our football?

The Spain/South Africa match was on the television at the bar. Villa scored his ridiculous goal: collecting the ball cleanly on his chest, dropping it to his foot and slicing it home as the defenders converged on him. An impossible chance converted through pure athletic instinct.

I turned to the beautiful girl next to me and said, “Did you see that strike??” I think I was praying she’d turn out to be closet football fan. Villa’s goal would give me the opening to ask her to dinner. We’d be talking transfer rumors over antipasti. Yes: this is how my mind works…

She smiled politely. “I don’t really follow sports,” she said, crushing my plans.

“It’s not just a sport,” I offered, clinging to a wisp of romantic hope. “It’s an art form!” She raised her eyebrows with interest. But in the end, despite a spirited description of Villa’s movements as brush strokes on a canvas, I could not sell football to her.

What I needed was a classic Ajax or Holland match from the 70s. What I needed was a Cruyff Turn. What I needed was Total Football.

The dream of beautiful football is an old one. It can push the blood through our circulatory tunnels as much as a last minute winner in a tight cup win. Thirty years ago, Ajax and the Netherlands national team gave the gift of Total Football to the world. Endless improvisation and invention. Outfielders shifting between all the positions. Flowing movement. An open game. Dazzling individual skill married with deep team chemistry. The Dutch gave birth to some of the most exciting football ever.

The teams and the concept were built around Johan Cruyff, often credited with being the greatest player to never have won a World Cup. Cruyff’s boundless inventiveness and liquid style was an inspiration to his teammates as well as generations of footballers since.

The idea of Total Football is still exciting. Any outfielder ready to shift into a different position at any time. Defenders becoming attackers. Strikers defending. Midfielders shifting all over the place. Whatever the situation needs. Like jazz players weaving lines of notes around each other to push the song on its mysterious journey.

The Dutch still love the philosophy of Total Football and, today, it permeates their footballing culture. Barcelona (who enjoyed Cruyff’s talents from 1973 until 1978) show the heritage in their flowing, veritable everybody-attack-but-the-keeper mentality which helped them win the triple last season. We even see glimpses of it in the modern Premier League. Players shifting roles when the moment calls for it. The free-flowing approach Arsene Wenger likes to employ with Arsenal may be the closest thing to Total Football in today’s English game. This harks back to Nick Hornby’s description of Arsenal in 1972 in the chapter entitled “A New Family” in his fine book Fever Pitch:

Over the summer of 1972, things changed. Arsenal, the most British (that is to say, dourest and most aggressive) team you could imagine, went all continental on us, and for half a dozen games at the start of the 72/73 season decided to play Total Football…

Everything about the Wolves game was disorienting – the five goals, the quality of passing (Alan Ball was outstanding), the purr of the crowd, the genuine enthusiasm of a normally hostile press.

By the end of the chapter, Arsenal revert back to their “dourest and most aggressive” nature, but Hornby captures the seductiveness of Total Football. You feel he was taken in, albeit bewildered, by Arsenal’s brief adoption of this football philosophy. Years later, Wenger would build a more “continental” side.

When it works it is beautiful to behold. When it doesn’t the players can be punished for being out of position by piercing counterattacks. Total Football cannot work in its purest state (that of the Cruyff era) in today’s Premier League. No one side has enough players bursting with the wholesale versatility Ajax and Holland were known for in the 70s. Today, in England, it would leave too many gaps for a patient foe to exploit.  But when an English side flirts with Total Football, slides into the mentality in brief moments, the aesthetic rewards for the supporter are enormous. The striker who steams back to help the defense. The centre-back who explodes forth and takes a shot on goal. The attacking full-back who jets down the wing to send in a cross.When the attacks come off right, the beautiful, risky nature of such movement is thrilling. When it comes to goals as well, there’s no better moment in football.

The Dutch Masters of the 70s never won a World Cup or the Euro. Total Football took their national team to the 1974 World Cup final, but they lost to host nation West Germany 2-1. Nevertheless, they went down in that final playing the most beautiful game. The mark that Dutch era left on football and the world of sport is forever indelible.

Total Football lives on here and there. A joy to find when it rears its beautiful head.