General Director Jan Reker takes a look at Jerusalem, but the squad of PSV limit their outdoor activities to a one hour stroll down the boulevard in steaming hot Tel Aviv.

In a city full of contrast PSV hope to illustrate the difference between a Dutch top club and a modest club from Israel.

Tonight at 17h30 GMT PSV will have to lay the foundation for a place in the Europa League against Bnei Yehuda.

Tel Aviv is a city that never sleeps.

Founded a century ago it is now home to 400,000 people and even in the middle of the week night the boulevard is swarming with people.

Bars and restaurants are open 24/7.

A couple of hundred meters down the road, also on the boards of the Mediterranean, there is the quarter of Jaffa.

Once the oldest port in the world it has now been swallowed by the growing tourist attraction.

There on the border between the old world and the 21st century lies the Bloomfield Stadium.

The players of PSV are not interested in these contrasts.

In the morning they left the Hilton Hotel briefly for a stroll at temperatures of 36°C.

After that there was lunch, rest and stay in the shade.

At the moment that the players started their walk, 50 miles away General Director Jan Reker enjoyed the view of the old city of Jerusalem from Olive Mountain.

Half an hour later he stood at the wailing wall between orthodox Jews and was even offered to have his children and grandchildren blessed for some money.

He kindly refused.

After twelve years in the Champions League PSV have to settle for financially less interesting Europa League, but it's no less of an adventure as Jan Reker had the idea to decorate the board room with a map showing all the places where PSV have played.

Reker, normally a torrent of words, fell silent when he visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum just outside Jerusalem.

From that spot to the Bloomfield Stadium was a giant leap and it's not for nothing that the players have limited their range to the hotel and the training pitch.

The only thing PSV-coach Fred Rutten has studied of Israel are DVD's of opponents Bnei Yehuda (Sons of Juda).

After the laborers club (Hapoel) and that of the right wing Zionists (Maccabi) it's the third club of Tel Aviv, founded in the quarter of Ha Tikva ('quarter of hope').

It's hot and muggy when PSV train besides the stadium at 19h30 local time.

In the darkness the Bloomfield Stadium, with room for 18,700 spectators, looks cozy against the skyline of Tel Aviv.

The pitch is excellent, the greenest grass in the desert, according to PSV-scout Klaas van Baalen, who saw Bnei Yehuda on Saturday.

"When the players hit a ball wrong it's really their own mistake," Van Baalen says.

"The intellectualisation
of football has
always foundered
on a simple problem-
-the players. Doing
all your most
rewarding thinking
with your feet seems
to dull the philo-
sophical impulse.
Unless, of course,
you are Dutch.
According to legend,
Europeans played
a moronic, muscular
version of the world's
game, until Holland
proclaimed its vision
of total football in the
1974 World Cup,
and enlightenment
dawned."

From:
Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football