The History of the Netherlands’ ‘Big Three’

In a 13-year period from the turn of the twentieth century, the three modern giants of Dutch football – Ajax Amsterdam, Feyenoord of Rotterdam and PSV Eindhoven – were formed. They have all won the European Cup/Champions League, Ajax on four occasions.

Since 1964, these clubs have mopped up all of the Netherlands’ top flight (Eredivisie) titles bar three – twice denied by AZ Alkmaar and once by FC Twente under Steve McClaren.

The Foundation of Ajax Amsterdam

Named after an ancient Greek warrior, Ajax Amsterdam was founded on 18 March 1900, the second such attempt to form an ‘Ajax’ after a previous effort in 1894. The club spent its first decade in the second tier of Dutch football before reaching the top flight in 1911 under Irishman Jack Kirwan for just three seasons before its first – and only – relegation.

For context, while Association football had been played in the Netherlands since the 1870s with the foundation of Haarlemsche FC, it was a rich man’s game.

Dutch football journalist Jurryt van der Vooren tells me; “When football started in the Netherlands it was not played by the poor people, only by the rich and they didn’t allow poor people to become part of the club. The higher society would decide who could become members and, besides, the poor people didn’t have time to play football as they were working.”

As an indicator of the quality of the Dutch game before World War I, in 1913, Ajax even lost a friendly 3-1 at home to lower league English amateurs, Tunbridge Wells FC.

Ajax has been crowned Dutch champions 36 titles since its first title in 1918.

The Foundation of Feyenoord

On 19 July 1908, at the De Vereeniging café in Rotterdam, four young sportsmen formed the Wllhelmina club.^⁠1 Four years later, the club settled on the name Rotterdamsche Voetbal Vereeniging Feijenoord (Rotterdam Football Club Feijenoord) and, after several kit changes, selected its now-famous red-and-white shirts and black shorts. It was not until 1974 that the club changed its spelling to the current ‘Feyenoord’.

Based in the south of the city, Feyenoord quickly gained a reputation as the working-class football club at a time when Dutch football was still very much a gentleman’s game. Until the 1920s, Feyenoord were not even the top team in Rotterdam. That honour went to Sparta, which is the Netherlands’ oldest professional football club, founded in 1888. Sparta won five of its six national titles between 1908 and 1915, with its final title – and only Eredivisie title – coming in 1959.

Feyenoord became the first Dutch club to win the European Cup in 1970, ushering in a brief period of Dutch footballing dominance in Europe – arch-rivals Ajax won the European Cup in the following three years. Feyenoord would win the UEFA Cup in 1974 and Die Klassieker fixture between Ajax and Feyenoord has led to so much fan violence in recent decades that away fans are banned.

Feyenoord has 16 national championships.

The Foundation of PSV Eindhoven

The third of the big three – Philips Sport Vereniging (Philips Sports Union) – was founded in Eindhoven on 31 August 1913 after a party marking the centenary of Dutch independence from Napoleon’s France at the Philips electronics company. The roots of the club had been set in train three years earlier when a group of employees played within the grounds of the Philips village before the football team was absorbed into the wider PSV on 22 October 1913.

“There was a big social revolution at the start of the First World War,” Jurryt van der Vooren explains. “Although the Netherlands was neutral, young men had to join the army in case of invasion. These young men would pass much of the time playing football – for many Dutch men this was the first time they had ever played football and they liked it so after the war they started up their own clubs. It is during the First World War that we see football move from being the game solely of the rich towards becoming the national sport as it is now. We have never had a class war in Dutch society, but in football we have.”

PSV joined the Dutch league a year later and within a decade had made it into the First Division, where it has stayed since 1926.^⁠2For its first 15 years, the club was only open to Philips employees but opened up to people without a connection to the company in 1928.

“Most of the southern clubs in the Netherlands after the First World War were members of the Catholic Football Association…Everything was in their own society, they were never meeting each other, so football helped break down barriers,” van der Vooren adds.

Yet, PSV Eindhoven was something of a latecomer to the top table of Dutch football. Until the mid-1970s the club had only won four championships. It has won a further twenty since then – nearly half the championships played since 1975. The peak came in 1988 with European Cup glory in Stuttgart against Benfica.

Interested in the roots of Dutch football and the global story of how football got started? Then check out my book Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World.