PSV Eindhoven
Every PSV home match has a moment in the nineteenth minute that the rest of European football would find quirky and Eindhoven finds inevitable. At nineteen minutes and thirteen seconds into the game, the home crowd sings the club anthem - the time stamp a reference to 1913, the year a group of Philips workers crowded into a meeting on 31 August and founded Philips Sport Vereniging. The boeren, as the fans proudly call themselves - the peasants - have been doing some version of this for more than a century. In return the club they built has won the Eredivisie 26 times and, on one improbable night in Stuttgart, the whole of Europe.
A Centenary, a Defeat, and a Slow Climb
PSV's founding was tied up with Dutch national feeling: 31 August 1913 was the day Philips organised celebrations marking the centenary of the defeat of Napoleon's forces in the Low Countries. The club's first competitive match, in September 1915, was a 3-2 loss to Willem II Reserves. From there, slow climbing: promotion in 1918, again in 1921, finally reaching the top tier in 1926. The first national title came in 1929, after a 5-1 thrashing of Velocitas. Coen Dillen, who joined in 1949, would in the 1956-57 season score 43 league goals - still the Dutch record - and earn the nickname "The Cannon." By the time the European era opened, PSV had quietly become the standard-bearer of the Brabantian south.
Van der Kuijlen and the First European Trophy
The Kees Rijvers years remade the club. Hired as coach in 1972, Rijvers built the team around Willy van der Kuijlen, a technical attacker whose career had stalled until he was given a free role. He paired him with the towering Swedish header Ralf Edstrom. The Dutch cup came in 1974, the league in 1975, a double in 1976. In 1978, on a night in Eindhoven, PSV beat Bastia 3-0 in the second leg of the UEFA Cup final, with goals from Willy van de Kerkhof, Gerrie Deijkers, and Van der Kuijlen himself. It was the club's first European trophy and proof, in case anyone needed it, that the boeren could win against anyone.
1988, and Van Breukelen's Hands
By the mid-1980s PSV was signing players with flair: Ruud Gullit, Soren Lerby, Eric Gerets, then a young Ronald Koeman. Guus Hiddink took over for the 1987-88 season and produced what is still the best campaign in the club's history. PSV scored 117 league goals on the way to the title. They reached the European Cup final with a string of away goals - Wim Kieft at Bordeaux, Edward Linskens with a notoriously lethargic shot at the Santiago Bernabeu. In the Stuttgart final against Benfica neither side could score in 120 minutes. In the penalty shoot-out, goalkeeper Hans van Breukelen saved Antonio Veloso's effort. PSV had the European Cup, the league, and the KNVB Cup - the treble, achieved by only six other European clubs in the history of the game.
A Finishing School for Strikers
After the 1988 treble PSV outsmarted half the continent by signing a 23-year-old Brazilian named Romario. His hat-trick against Steaua Bucuresti in November 1989 announced him to Europe; he would lead the league in scoring three years running before Barcelona prised him away in 1993. The pattern repeated. Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Arjen Robben, Park Ji-sung, Mark van Bommel, Memphis Depay, Cody Gakpo - the list of players who turned themselves into world-class talents in Eindhoven before being sold for record fees reads like a primer in modern football. Manchester United paid 30 million euros for Van Nistelrooy in 2001, the largest fee PSV had ever received.
Boeren in a Provincial City
PSV's main rivalry has always been with Ajax - the metropolitan capital club against the provincial southerners. The fans wear the label boeren as a badge: peasants, farmers, of and proud of North Brabant. The Flag of North Brabant shows up on shirts and on the stadium walls; the squad reserves the number 12 for the supporters. The 33,000 who turn up to most matches come overwhelmingly from Brabant itself, with smaller contingents from Limburg, Gelderland and across the Belgian border. The connection to Philips is still there - the company sponsored the kit without exception from 1982 to 2016, a record in Dutch football - but in 2019 the sponsorship widened into a Metropoolregio Brainport Eindhoven consortium spanning ASML, Jumbo, VDL and the High Tech Campus. The club, like the city it represents, has quietly outgrown its founder without ever quite leaving home.
From the Air
PSV's training ground De Herdgang sits at about 51.46 degrees north, 5.42 degrees east on the northwestern edge of Eindhoven; the Philips Stadion itself is at 51.4417 degrees north, 5.4674 degrees east. Eindhoven Airport (EHEH) is approximately 4 km west of the stadium. From cruise the Brainport cluster - the stadium, the old Philips factories at Strijp, the High Tech Campus to the south - reads as a clear ring of activity around the historic city core. Best viewed at 5,000-15,000 ft in clear conditions.