Transnational connectivity, cultural interaction and selective adaptation: English Corinthians and amateur football in the Netherlands, c .1906–39

Piercey, N and Porter, D (2017) Transnational connectivity, cultural interaction and selective adaptation: English Corinthians and amateur football in the Netherlands, c .1906–39. Sport in History, 37 (2). pp. 124-145. ISSN 1746-0263

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Abstract

The Corinthians were synonymous with gentlemanly amateurism in English association football. They visited the Netherlands in 1906, 1922, 1923, 1924 and 1933, bringing not just a particular way of playing the game but their own socially-exclusive version of amateurism. This had significant appeal in the Netherlands, where soccer had been taken up in the late nineteenth century by middle-class young men for whom English sport signified modernity. In 1906 the Corinthians supplied a convenient model for those seeking to raise standards and improve the quality of the national team. Later, in the 1920s, as soccer became more popular and its social base widened, the tourists were welcomed by socially conservative elements associated with pre-1900 clubs who were anxious to maintain their status and influence despite being outnumbered by the newer volksclubs. Corinthian-style amateurism had many adherents in the Netherlands and the tours prompted the formation of the Swallows (1907) and the Netherlands Corinthians (1922). These clubs, however, were not simply imitators but adapted the original English model for their own purposes.