Johnny Heitinga has played in Holland, Spain and England, achieving a boyhood ambition formed in the country of his birth by going on to represent clubs in the two leagues he considers the best in Europe. After Ajax he played for Atlético Madrid in La Liga and is now in his third season at Everton. So when he says the Premier League is the best in the world he is well qualified to offer an opinion.

"I don't say it is always the best football in the world," he says quickly, lest anyone should misconstrue his meaning. "But I have always liked English football and I still do. I think the Premier League is the best because of the atmosphere in the stadiums and the spirit of the players on the pitch. Every week there are unbelievable games. It's not easy to play here and that's why I say it's the best."

It certainly cannot be easy playing for Everton at the moment, with even David Moyes's famous ingenuity being challenged by ever deepening financial despondency, but a man best known for being sent off in a World Cup final knows that the game is not always fair and the playing field rarely level. "You can see that the better teams in England at the moment are those that can spend most money," he says.

"It's not hard to work out. But that's the way football is and you need to deal with it. Our record against the bigger teams has not been too bad and up till this season we had particularly good results against Manchester City. OK, they beat us this season and they are top of the table but they have spent a ridiculous amount of money. When you have a small squad, like Everton, you have to view these things as a challenge. Liverpool didn't have such a good season last year but they spent £100m and now they are doing better. We can't afford that sort of quality injection, so we have to make the best of the quality we do have. Injuries are the most frustrating thing for a small squad, losing games through missing players can be hard to deal with."

The rest Heitinga takes in his stride, as might be expected of an Anglophile from Holland. "I grew up watching English football, I knew exactly what to expect," the 28-year-old defender says. "Of course you don't get teams like Stoke or Blackburn in Spain. No one plays long balls. No team in Spain is even as tall as Stoke City. I'm not the tallest of players, especially for a centre-half, and there are some huge defenders and strikers in England, but you don't have to be big to win the battles. You get a lot more bruises here but against physical opponents you have to try and out-football them, use your brain a bit more."

It was the Dutch who were criticised for being over-physical in the last World Cup, especially when kicking lumps out of Spain in the final, but Heitinga is proud of what his side achieved and philosophical about his two yellow cards in the last game. "I'm not that physical a player nor do I think I'm a dirty one," he says. "I've picked up a few yellow cards in my career but not so many reds. It's funny because it depends where you play. When I play as a centre-half I generally get booked less often than when playing in midfield. Because when you play in midfield there are more battles, more balls to win."

To some extent Holland's otherwise impressive World Cup was overshadowed by the negative publicity they attracted in the final, or at least that was the case in this country and Spain. Back home, Heitinga can confirm, due credit was given to a side that had knocked out Brazil and Uruguay to reach the final. "People thought we did well, especially after the first 25 minutes against Brazil when we were getting beat and only our fantastic goalkeeper kept the score down to 1-0," he says. "During the interval we had a talk and decided that 45 minutes from your whole life is nothing, so agreed to go out and give it everything we could. The spirit and the fight we showed turned the whole World Cup round for us. It shows there is still room in football for sheer self-belief and will to win, even against the most gifted opponents. If you want to reach a World Cup final, you can't be worried about who you are going to play on the way anyway, you have to be ready to beat whoever comes along. When we started out in South Africa we looked on it as just six games to reach the final. Then after the first game against Denmark it was just five games, and so on. In the end we were actually playing in the World Cup final."

Read it and weep, England – and the next bit too. Heitinga says he enjoyed every single minute of his time in South Africa, even before Holland were within sniffing distance of the final. Even before they had played a game. "I loved every single day, it was the best thing in my life so far," he says, sounding suspiciously like a professional footballer who relished being at the absolute apex of his profession. England players made the experience sound more like an ordeal in a prison camp, though of course the Dutch were relaxed enough to base themselves in a city centre and take advantage of their surroundings, an idea the FA have belatedly adopted for next summer's European Championship. "There was time to relax, time to work and time to look round the city centre," Heitinga recalls. "We had a security guard with us and we were told to be careful but otherwise our time was our own. A few players went to the shops, a few went to a restaurant, and so on. That sort of thing is important because six or seven weeks away from home is a long time for anyone. The World Cup was great."

Heitinga sees something of the Dutch fighting spirit in Everton, despite up-and-down results this season. "We don't have a team like Barcelona," he says. "We are not generally 2-0 up at half time and beginning to slacken off a bit in the second half. At Everton we need to fight for 90 minutes to get the points. That's our game but the spirit is still here; you could see that in the last couple of games."

A lot of that spirit is down to Moyes, and like every other Everton supporter, Heitinga worries about what might become of the club were the manager to receive an unrefusable offer from elsewhere. "It's possible that could happen but he has been here 10 years now and he has an Evertonian heart," he says. "It would need to be a good club to make him leave Everton. A massive club, in fact."

Like his manager, Heitinga is caught between his legitimate ambitions and his fondness for his present club. "I would like to win trophies but at the same time I am really happy to play for Everton," he says. "It's a nice club, a family club."

All the same he could only watch with admiration, and perhaps a degree of envy, as City scooped in Sergio Agüero from his old club in Spain in the summer, but at least he could tip off his team-mates. "Agüero is unbelievable," he says. "I told everyone here that such a special player could make a really big difference to City. I had some tough battles with him in training, I think I might have had to kick him a couple of times. He may only be small but he's incredibly strong and explosive. I knew from day one that he would score a lot of goals in England."