By the way, Holland is the place to be every new year - VCTM jnr is setting off fireworks for about 12 hours !!
We recently met a great Dutch family from Eindhoven - so our yearly visits mean travelling to and from both Winterswijk and Eindhoven.
Can I ask what you do in Haarlem? - Isn`t that near to Schipol?
The new year fireworks are something to behold, especially in the south the country. For a health and safety conscious nation they seem to lose their senses when it comes to New Year fireworks. I think 364 days of following the rules gets chucked out of the window for 1 crazy day.
Yep Haarlem is not far from Schiphol, near enough to Amsterdam for work (where I commute to ) and far enough away to avoid drunken Brits on stag do’s. It a nice place to live and I love it here.
Getting back to the facilities debate, you just have to watch an under 10’s game over here being played to see that we as a nation are failing monumentally to get the basics right. Sure they play matches here, but so much of the early training for kids is about learning the key football techniques so that when they play football (which incidentally is always on smaller pitches for kids) they are not just hoofing balls around. I’ve driven past my local football pitches in middle of winter and the floodlights will be on and kids will be training, with pleasure. In fact many amateur teams here are over-subscribed due to the demand from kids to play..... Its hardly a surprise then that the national team continually punches way about its weight and continues to produce players of the ilk that we’d kill for.