Ajax – Feyenoord, the only real classic Dutch game

Dear Guys
Heard that Ajax won by 5-1,but I couldn’t see the match. I have already said that Urby deserves a call. If we neglect his slight vulnerability in defense he is a much better left back than Evra, Clichy, Gio etc .So I would say, play two flying fullbacks in the wing ie Uruby and Weil on left and right. We should rely on our strength not weakeness, at the same time we should cover our weakness with our strength, i.e. with a collective effort we can avoid conceding goals; we all know our strength is attack. We may concede two goals but we will score three or four.
I saw the match of bayern, apart form some good long clever passes, van bommel, very rarely entered in to the half of studgart. He looked like exhausted, he was too slow in challenges. Always walking in the field. Normally that kind of mid fielders runs more than 12 km per match, he was not even close to 8 km. Really I am worried about this guy. African teams, Russia, Spain will make joke from that I am damn sure. Finally de jong will get extra duty. So it will affect the team balance. In addition to all this bayern is nowhere near to barca, real, pool, manu, Chelsea, arsenal, even Aston villa.
About brapheid, like peter VDL said, this guy is so poor in offence, no creativity at all, seems like he already reached his peak. But in defense he looked solid and reliable. But definitely we need a better guy for this spot. I heard that Patrick annholt is making waves with Coventry city (he is in loan from Chelsea) as a left back. He is going to come back to Chelsea in December.
I saw some guys are calling the head of mends dasilva.i believe he is the ideal replacement of De jong not schaars, vanbommel or de saaw. Coz this guy is also a destroyer. They are more build up players.
About vlaar. Either him or loovens must be in the team, according to the current from vlaar gets the nod.loovens is bit dip in form.
If de saaw is playing that good, why cannot we try him with dejong in the mid.i pray for de saaw and schaars to perform well and replace vanbommel from that spot.
About stekelenburg I had high hopes for this guy, but still he remains a question mark for me.

Posted from  India

@kevin hats off man………..

Posted from  India

@kevin hats off man………..

Posted from  India

Tiju:

A good and experienced defensive mid knows how to read the game and doesn´t need to run like a horse. Van Bommel is an expert at that and although he is not very fast he can read what the rivals will do and can anticipate their attacks. He is the best defensive midfielder Holland has and he will start in South Africa. He earned it in the qualification process assisting many goals and scoring himself some crucial goals.

I keep saying – DONT look at vBommel when he has the ball – look at him off the ball, he is amazing at positioning and threatening the opposition into hurried passes.
Just read the rumour Babel can go back to Ajax in January for 6mio pounds….. sounds like a deal.

Posted from  Singapore

@mario
I want to see the crowning of orange.Personally i dont think with vanbommel we are not going to acheive this,mark my words.i said about my obervations,Reading the game doesnt win everything.Normally for spain that position usually handles by Xavi.and senna in de jong’s postion.Xavi does every thing.i mean (reading+vison+attack+diffence)I just compared with him to Xavi and ze roberto.Vanbommel is too far away from both of them.If he is the best in holland,that means we are below spain,Brazil and england in holding mids.i hope van bommel will prove i am wrong.
its my stupid intusion and opinion leave it like that….
past 2 years i have been saying kuyt is not prolifc striker.Now peoples are realising that.i hope that will not happen in vanbommel’s case,coz it will cost us a world cup.

Posted from  India

@carlos bro and mario…i dont have any doubt on his brilliance in football..He reads the game that says everything.But is it enough?that is what my question.

Posted from  India

I agree with Tiju, reading the game is not enough. there are a bunch of things to have together: skills, tecnique, defensive abilities, attacking abilitis, speed. the guy has only 2 of these things, meanwhile xavi has every thing for example. for our midfield to work and have same level of spain we need both sneijder and vaart to play together, why can’t we try sneijder plus de jong as holding then vaart behind the striker, this way we increase the quality of our midfield.

any way mark my words down guys, if we do play with both bommel and de jong we will get raped sooner or later from some teams in the world cup.

you can’t have mathijsen-oijer then bommel-de jong infront of them, four people who have nothing to do with build up qualities!!!!!

and i am pretty sure van marwijk is sticking to this messed up midfield. mannnnnnnnnnn, I wish we lose badly to italy next week(even though I usually enjoy wining against italy) just for van marwijk to realise early that he has a problem with the first third of his pitch.

Alaa italy is nowhere near orange..so i dont think they will beat us.Let us play against ivory coast,Brazil,Spain,Even switzerland they will show us were we stand.Definitly Germany and iatly cannt teach us.But i wish a loss for orange for seeing the reality.

Posted from  India

i know we are much better than italy, italy is not even half of what spain got for example, but thats the friendly we have man, so I am hoping this friendly will show us our weaknesses because after waiting for two years after the shock against russia i dont want to get another one next june (which is coming if he insists on playing with certain players).

How about a friendly with protugal?????????????????????

Posted from  India

Unlucky castelen out for several months..Poor boy,i think his career is over.

Posted from  India

against teams like Ivory coast,Arjentina,spain,Brail,Portugal,Switzerland,Russia,Mexico,USA i will go for the following team
————–EDVS(mandatory)—————-

Van der weil—-Bulahhruz–Mathjenson–Bauma
—————Dejong–De saaw—————
Vaart———–Znijder———-Elia
————–Vanpersie——————–
super subs-Robben if needed
RVN if needed
Urby for bauma if needed.

Posted from  India

@Tiju
germany can beat orange, they have pace in attack and giants in defense.

Posted from  United States

Manchester United wants Luis Suarez…

Seeing the suggested line-ups here and after reading some comments about vBommel (and thinking back at the way he played his last games) got me thinking about Kuyt in that position again (I may have mentioned it earlier).

Think of him as filling the same role Fabreguas fills at Arsenal. Fabreguas goes into the box on a lot of occasions when there’s a possibility of a cross coming in. He has already scored many goals that way. OF course Kuyt is not comparible with Fabreguas, but who would you rather have coming into the box that way, vBommel or even Sneijder?

These guys don’t have the physical ability (as well as speed) Kuyt has to get ahead of defenders and score a goal (sort of like the first goal by vPersie last weekend) or has his aerial strength for high crosses coming in.

The reason why Schaars and vBommel are often preferred over de Zeeuw is probably the aerial strength factor of having both de Jong and de Zeeuw in that area. This is not an issue with Kuyt.

The only question is, how good will his passing/build-up play be. So far at Liverpool I’ve seen that he handles that pretty well especially on counters. I’ve seen him pick out the right people with some decent passes, long and short. But when you’re playing def.mid. you’ll need to be able to do that when there’s no space as well.

Hmmm, come to think of it, I believe I already DID mention all of this earlier. But now that I’ve seen Kuyt struggling lately on the wing as well as CF, I’m starting to believe that here he might actually be more useful to the team and perhaps even start scoring again, at least at Oranje. And it will allow for a REAL goalscorer to be added, or a real winger, like Elia or RVN (vPersie moves to the wing if RVN or Hunter can get in form, only then this is an option, otherwise Elia is the only option, in which case I prefer Robben on the right, but they can switch around as much as they like of course).

Posted from  Netherlands

And Kuyt isn’t any slower in his ball handling than vBommel anyway, nor in terms of technical and dribbling ability. And we know he’s good at ball recovery. Too bad he’s not used to the position. He’d be great in that position if he knew more about def.midf. positioning.

Posted from  Netherlands

@ alaa– There has been experiments (under Van Basten) where Sneijder operated as defensive Midfielder, and it worked horribly for the obvious reason: Sneijder is a natural no. 10. Being a truly playmaker, he needs to have the ball on his feet to work his magic, he can’t just sit tight and expect the opponents come to his way. And if you’ve been following Inter Milan this season, you know exactly what I mean. Maurinho knows how to get the best out of Sneijder by giving him license to wonder around supporting the spearheads.

Contrary to your belief, in my view, the 2 holding midfielders (Van Bommel, De Jong/De Zeeuw) are IMPERATIVE if Oranje wants to have any chance to go deep in the WC 2010. I said this because the current Oranje back four (and the GK I might add) is very fragile. In fact, it’s probably the weakest of all legitimate contenders. There has to be an extra layer of protection in front of them, otherwise the defense would leak goals left and right. And btw, the game these days is won by defense (ask Greece of 2004 and Italy 2006). Get the defense straight up first, then think about scoring. By no means I suggest for negative football, knowing that with the qualities of Sneijder, Robben, Van Persie, and Vaart, I have no worry about building up attacks. Any of those players have enough creativities to create openings. And I should mention that Van Bommel is an under-appreciated passer, yet another attacking means in Bert’s toolbox. Final point, having two DM’s closing down the gate gives the two wings backs a security blanket to come forward and support the attacks. This is good news because by Oranje’s wingbacks (whoever that may end up) are all attacking-minded, and not always the cleanest when it comes to defense.

Posted from  United States

One thing id like to know more about the game from you guys – i couldnt watch it and thank you for the great updates – is how well or bad did Gio perform?
Anyone?
did the old man get tired? or is he still our horse on the left side ?

Posted from  Norway

If Van Maarwijk doesn’t select Emanuelson for the upcoming friedlies it’ll be unfair because he’s playing every week at a very high level and he actually has experience as international.

I agree with 3ric that 2004 and 2006 have shown that defence comes first. But 2008 has shown that Oranje is one of the few nations that has the attacking quality and creativity to completely brake the tightest defences (Italy, France, Romania), but only as long as Oranje is willing to take risks and put on extra attackers at the right time and use their best quality players. Van Basten was not afraid to do this, I wonder what BvM will do if he’s up 2-0 against teams like Italy or France.

We simply don’t have the quality in the back to “get our defense straight up” as you put. So why even try? Just do what van Basten did in 2008 and go for it. Maybe it didn’t work out against Russia, but we DID get the equalizer, so I’d say it worked. We were just not attentive/concentrated enough after the equalizer to control the match, perhaps we were too worried about having to go to penalties and were taking unnecessary risks. But I think it was more that the Dutch players weren’t expecting Russia to come right back at them and perhaps a subconscious thought after the equalizer that they had the game in the bag.

Naturally there were other factors at hand but I wouldn’t condemned a certain strategy if you’ve only lost 1 game with it. Especially the way we lost it.

I do agree that Sneijder’s qualities are being done most justice by having him in the nr. 10 indeed. But if there’s no room in the team for vdV and/or Elia, I’d rather shift some people around than playing vBommel over an in form vdV or Elia. That’s a much better solution in my eyes than the substitutions I’ve seen made by BvM by replacing Sneijder with vdV, or Kuyt with Affelay, Robben with Elia. So in short, our best players must be allowed to play TOGETHER, instead of one after the other, or trying to fix things that aren’t broken, which is basicly how I feel whenever Sneijder and Robben are taken off to make room for players like Elia, vdV and Affelay. If that means that will cost us in defense, than so be it, we’re not going to avoid Spain, Brazil, Portugal or Argentina to score against us anyway, not even with 12 vBommels, forget it. Just outscore em.

But that’s exactly why I’m suggesting Kuyt there, that way, you might not give up that much in defense plus you will have a lot of possibilities when going forward.

Posted from  Netherlands

Against Italy I’d start with:

de Jong + de Zeeuw (or if they have much height in that area I’d use vBommel, which I don’t think they have, I’d have to check)
Robben + Sneijder + Elia
vPersie

Bring Kuyt if you have difficulty scoring for de Zeeuw (perhaps even if you’re only 1-0 ahead, bring him IMMEDIATELY when you go 1-0 behind, don’t wait till the second half or 60th minute, which is such a stupid standard practice, probably straight from the rulebook of coaching).

Against the more effective goalscoring nations (Brazil, Spain, etc.), I’d simply start with Kuyt there.

Posted from  Netherlands

Allthough, that is dependend on having it tested first, which probably won’t happen anyway, so I’m afraid it will be a risky option if you try it at the WC.

Posted from  Netherlands

Naturally, when you try to use Kuyt to go in the box á la Fabreguas style, you’ll have to instruct vdWiel to stop going for goal himself and work on his crosses and getting past his defender on the outside, Robben will be an ideal partner for him creating space by drawing at least 2 defenders to him by going inside.

With the danger that comes from vPersie in the box and the lurking threat Sneijder imposes by staying at shooting range outside the box, space should become available for Kuyt to move in (if Kuyt is picked up, he’ll still have a chance to get ahead of his defender and more space for Sneijder’s shot as well, Sneijder will have to drop back a bit for even more space). That could be a really effective play and it’s about the same way it works at Arsenal (I’ve seen them score more than once that way).

Posted from  Netherlands

Major scoop from always well-informed Johan Derksen: If a reasonable bid comes around Ajax are forced to sell Suarez due to their financial position, their 100 million revenue from stocks has vaporized and the management and coaches have thrown away more than 140 million in transfers of failed players, despite having succesfully made 100 million by selling players. This is the main reason why Ajax want to upgrade his contract, so they can set-up a clause for a pricetag of 40 million euro’s to any club who wants to take him over. Otherwise the price might come out considerably lower than that.

Posted from  Netherlands