Politics
Why do Dutch fans wear orange?
Australia, Japan and Germany: all countries whose national football teams wear colors that do not appear on their national flags. Australia’s team plays in green and gold, a nod to the country’s natural landscape and the golden wattle, Australia’s national floral emblem.
Germany’s traditional white kit traces its origins to Prussia, whose flag featured black and white. Japan, meanwhile, wears blue for perhaps the most intriguing reason of all: superstition. According to a popular story, the color became associated with good fortune after a string of sporting successes in the 1930s (although the claim has never been conclusively proven).
But, it’s hard to think of a group of football supporters more recognizable than the Dutch. Known as the Oranje Legioen (Orange Legion), Dutch sports fans have an unparalleled ability to turn every bar, stadium and city square into a sea of orange.
This year’s World Cup is no exception. Thousands of Dutch fans have traveled across the Atlantic to support their national team in person, undoubtedly with suitcases full of orange clothing. Today, they’re in Houston.
The Dutch flag, however, consists of three horizontal stripes: red, white and blue. So what’s with the orange?
The answer dates back centuries and is also the reason why several places in the United States, one of the hosts of this year’s World Cup, have “Orange” in their names.
Orange is the national color of the Netherlands because of its ties to the Dutch royal family. It all began with William of Orange, also known as William the Silent, who became the symbol of Dutch independence during the Eighty Years’ War against Spanish rule. The conflict began in 1568 and ended, you guessed it, 80 years later in 1648.
As William of Orange became synonymous with Dutch independence, the color in his title became associated with the Dutch nation itself. More than four centuries later, it remains a powerful national symbol.
But what does this have to do with the U.S.? Long before the current-day takeover of the Oranje Legioen, of American cities hosting world cup matches, the House of Orange, the royal dynasty founded by William of Orange, had already left its mark on North America.
During the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, the Dutch Republic established the colony of New Netherland, which stretched across parts of present-day New York, New Jersey and Delaware.
Even after the English seized the colony in 1664 and New Amsterdam became New York City, traces of the House of Orange survived in place names such as Orange County, New York. The county was specifically named after William III, Prince of Orange, a descendant of William the Silent who later became King William III of England.
So in a sense, it is a full-circle moment: Dutch football fans dressed in orange have returned to a part of the world where the House of Orange left a lasting legacy centuries ago.
Climate activists are planning protests Sunday against FIFA’s sponsorship deal with Saudi state-owned oil and gas giant Aramco at World Cup sites and fan zones across the country.
Organizer Zan Dubin told Blue Light News the protests are aimed at pressuring FIFA to drop Aramco while calling attention to the way oil company advertising becomes part of fans’ World Cup memories, a practice she called “sportswashing,” even as greenhouse gas emissions from oil use drive global temperatures higher.
The main action is set to take place outside Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium ahead of the Belgium-Iran match there. The protest represents an extension of a crosstown campaign known as Dodger Fans Against Fossil Fuels, a Los Angeles-based campaign that has gathered nearly 30,000 signatures urging Dodgers owner Mark Walter to drop oil company Phillips 66.
FIFA announced Aramco as a major worldwide partner in 2024, giving the company sponsorship rights across several tournaments, including the 2026 Men’s World Cup and the 2027 Women’s World Cup. The deal drew pushback from climate and human rights groups, and more than 100 professional women’s soccer players later urged FIFA to drop it. Aramco’s logo appears prominently in stadiums and on global match broadcasts.
The Los Angeles protest is being organized by a local chapter of the Sierra Club and Third Act SoCal and is expected to include Extinction Rebellion Lamenters, street-theater demonstrators dressed in sackcloth. Dubin said she was also in touch with protesters planning to show up at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami before a match there, as well as at fan sites in New Jersey, Seattle and Dallas.
U.S. fans are making travel plans to the Bay Area after their team clinched first place in Group D following a victory over Australia and Turkey’s defeat to Paraguay.
Ready to welcome them will be San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has personally attended five World Cups. He is also an investor in 49ers Enterprises, which purchased the venerable Leeds United soccer team in 2023.
We spoke with Lurie yesterday via FaceTime from a city command center, where he drew a parallel to his English club’s own turnaround this season: Newly promoted and expected to go straight back down, Leeds instead finished safely mid-table. Lurie is trying to engineer a similar revival in San Francisco, using major events like the World Cup and February’s Super Bowl to project competence and attract visitors and families.
Matches including the July 1 encounter between the U.S. and an as-yet undetermined opponent are played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, 40 miles from downtown San Francisco and much closer to San Jose. Lurie is nevetheless eager to claim the so-called “San Francisco Bay Area” venue as his city’s own.
“It’ll be incredible,” Lurie, a moderat Democrat who presents himself as a technocrat, told Blue Light News. “It’ll be a thrilling moment for San Francisco, and for our region.”
Read our full interview with Lurie here.
The Netherlands has had a week in Texas, between matches in Dallas and Houston, and one of the leading members of its government delegation has been using the time to conduct old-school diplomacy.
In Houston, Mirjam Sterk — who has an expansive portfolio of a minister for long-term care, youth and sport — has visited dementia researchers at Texas Medical Center, among other stops, spoke to the CEO of an LGBTQ+ community center and played wheelchair basketball at a community center for kids with disabilities.
Sterk, who hails from the center-right Christian Democratic Appeal in the Dutch coalition, said she’s counting on the famous fan walk that Dutch fans are expected to conduct en route to their match today against Sweden to build bridges in an unstable world. Speaking to Blue Light News by phone, Sterk said she’s found plenty of like-minded people at Houston’s fan festival, among other destinations.
“It’s a great example of how sports in this world, which is, of course, polarized with all this tension … between countries, can unite,” Sterk said. “It’s also a sort of language we speak with each other that helps, I think, also in dealing with all these other challenges.”
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