The beautiful game: football has been played for decades and the Second World War didn't stop people playing. After Germany capitulated in May 1945, football was back as national pastime number one in record time. An exhibition on football during the Second World War will open in Amsterdam's Resistance Museum on 29 April 2009.

During the Second World War, playing football was a way to forget the war, even though the effects of the war were still felt. Shortly after the German invasion, Jewish players were banned from the football field. In 1944, food shortages made a real impact on players; it's difficult to play on an empty stomach.
 
Jan Hobby, who played for the Amsterdam club DWS, remembers it well: "All the Jewish players disappeared first and then hunger took its toll. Players were dizzy or so weak and nauseous that they couldn't play any more."

An invitation by a football club in Friesland saved Jan Hobby and many others. Heerenveen invited 15 players from DWS, Ajax and a couple of other Amsterdam clubs to come to Friesland and placed them all in foster homes. Even during the last year of the war, known as the hunger winter, there was still food in the north of Netherlands.

There were also small acts of resistance; the Amsterdam Volewijkers sometimes played in orange shirts - the colour of the royal house - instead of its usual green and white strip. But football was mainly distraction, a way to forget the every day misery of war.