Dennis Bergkamp, a fan of English football

i agree alex, lay of people, if we had left robben on like in a real game we would’ve won. Besides too much of “our defence sucks” not enough of “this is how to improve our defense”.

vlaar was in both eredivisie teams of the week so far

marcellis and van der wiel are top top prospects and maduro is gonna be great for valencia. Loovens got best ratings for celtic in champions league qualifyer, we have potential people. a tie with england is not the end of the world.

and vdv is leaving madrid for playing time. kjh has made a great move for his career and will take central striking duties like he did vs scotland when he plays/ scores.

yes defence was very average and ooijer and heitinga should be replaced, yes most other players looked sluggish. but hey 2-2 with england isn’t a too bad result in the end. I remember 1 year before the 06 world cup we played italy and got DOMINATED (remember toni on vlaar?). think we’re a lot stonger than in 2005. As long as ooijer gets replaced by maduro, heitinga by van der wiel. van bommel is fit. Braafheid gets playing time at bayern (he didnt start last week and if van gaal is successful in his bid for bosingwa, lahm could move back to the left hand side and braafheid might not get many minutes… fingers crossed that doesnt happen) van der vaart finds a club in which he plays every game – sneijder the same.
Things should be fine
btw, very impressed by de jong, that man has come a long way since his Ajax years. (largely thanks to spell at a club like hamburg i believe – The bundesliga is a good place for such dutch talents – tough championship and regular european football)

Posted from  New Zealand

to be honest. Why is everyone freaking out? Stop being so pessimistic there’s absolutely no need. OK our center backs were out paced by defoe and rooney but we have known that they are not good against quicker opponents however if we look for what they did well, they shut down emile heskey and carlton cole with ease, which tells us that if we play teams like Italy, Germany, or England (with heskey or Cole) then we should go with mathijsen and maybe ooijer because they are very good at marking tall, target men. However, Bert should have seen that Capello brought on a lot of pace at the half so he should have countered by taking off ooijer, sliding johnny to the center, and put van der wiel on the right to help negate the pace of defoe and milner. Braafheid owned the left side by himself, new starting left back bye bye gio. Anyways, what we can also get out of this game is that we are good at pressing as a team. On their second goal VdV steped on Barry forcing him to play a blind ball backwards and Robben saw this before it happened and stepped to John Terry creating the goal, so no it was not a lucky goal. Also I thought de jong was a beast, he made so many tackles on lampard and rooney, I really think while van bommel is out we should play wes and de jong in the center. Anyways, I do not think it was that bad of a performance for everyone to say that we are in shambles when two months ago we were playing incredible football. Two things to remember about this friendly as well.
1. It was a friendly so relax
2. Its preseason so most of our boys are not in there mid season rhythm.
Anyways all this being said I think this should be the line-up
stenk
van der wiel,heitinga or boula, mathijsen,braafheid
van bommel, de jong
Robben Sneijder Kuyt
Van Persie

Posted from  United States

Oh men!!! I didn’t watch the game but I just watched the goals and Heitinga looked very bad in England’s 2nd goal. England gave us 2 gifts!.

Yes, I am glad we’ve already qualified but as many of you’ve said there have to be some changes otherwise this team won’t be able to compete against the best.

Ooijer bench, Kuyt on the right, Heitinga benched. Sneijder and VdV benched until they find their fitness back. Robben needs to better his finishing.

————Stekelenburg——–

—-V.D.Wiel–Maduro–Mathijsen–Braafheid–

———-Bommel—-Nigel————

—-Kuyt——V.Persie——Robben–

————-Huntelaar————

Our right and left backs have to go forward and create more danger for our opponents.

Well Sonneveld, u actually made a great summary of that, i would add some.

Zuiverloon, still active in Championship u know, but i think only an option for 2012 or so.
Plus, Babel had a great pre-season, I was impressed, could u imagine that. And if really needed, we have more possibilities in Elia, Ronnie Stam, Theo Janssen, Brama, Drenthe, Emanuelson, De Guzman. They are all available and good, if really needed.
Plus the entire U-21 team is really talented.

Posted from  Netherlands

@alaa how can u call urself a fan when say stuff like that i agree with Alex

Posted from  United States

Wow, it looks like we are experiencing classic levels of processing here, also known as the Kübler-Ross model:Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and last Acceptance. LOL And that after just one tied friendly in the middle of pre-season. U guys don’t honoustly think V.Marwijk and his staff were pleased with this. There are bound to be some changes.

Posted from  Netherlands

@Alex, I totally agree with you. There are some on this blog who are way too critical. Most of our key players were not sharp enough to impose their game and control the tempo. As a result, the english forwards had more time on the ball and were more mobile. I think what this game showed is that we cannot rely on our defense to keep a score. BUT we all knew that!!! We are clearly not the Juventus or Inter of the catenaccio era, far from it. We can only feel safe when we are up 3-0.
Players grades:
Stenk: 6 not much to do but was good overall
Heitinga: 6 pretty good first half but terrible mistake that lead to 2nd goal
Oojier:5 again as we have said many times, did very well against a big guy (Heskey) as he has in the past vs Toni, Carew, and so on; but he is horrible vs fast players.
Mathijsen: 5 nothing special at all
Braafheid:8 by far the best Oranje. I hope VM sees that otherwise we are toast
Schaars:6 ok but nothing special. Did his job though. VB is way better.
De Jong: 6.5 did better than I expected. But he is even more effective when complemented by VB
VDV: 5 missed so many passes it was incredible. Clearly out of form. Touching though and probably smart from VM to have put him as a starter and captain. Should give him a boost. Clear that he needs to play at a high level with a new club.
VP:5.5 again nothing special but dangerous at times.
Kuijt:7 second best oranje. Runs everywhere, never gives up (a bit like Rooney), he is a poison for any defender.
Robben:6 like VP but slightly better than VP because he was more direct and brought at least one goal
Babel:6 Similar to both VP and Robben. I like teh fact he is direct and goes to goal. Could have done better with his shooting. (What happened to both Babel and Wes in terms of their shooting? these 2 were incredible at Ajax and now they cannot shoot for their lives)
Sneijder:6.5 3rd best oranje. Again very dynamic, great technique, does not lose the ball. Overall quite good and I agree with the fact he would have don ebetter had the players around him performed better. Poor shooting though
Affelay: 5 really not impressive. Was disappointed by him big time.

Overall i think VM needs to bring a bit of new blood into the team especially defensively.

Posted from  United States

Well , i think if that match wasn’t a friendly match , i would be in the hospital now suffering a cerebral stroke

I just wanna say few points :

1. De jong was the man of the match , brafhied was great too . Brafhied deserves a place in the starting line up in oranje and bayern , de jong can handle the DMF role (alone) in a world class team , can face big teams , simply he is the best player in the dutch squad at the moment .

2.i’ve no doubt about schaars talent , but he need to play more time with oranje , we should also consider that he was injured before the match , and may be he wasn’t in his complete form .

3.mathijsen , ooijer , heitinga , afellay , babel have no place at all in the squad .

4. Vaart and sneijder have to find new teams quickly .
They both suck today. They need to play together to be able to face big teams . Like xavi and iniesta .

5.bommel is really important in the squad .

6.we need to renew the team.
Play with new young skillful players , elia , de guzman ,
emanuelson , drenthe , bissiswar , lens , van der weil instead of engelaar , babel , afellay , heitinga .

7. Kuyt , persie ,robben ( good performance )

my message to marwijk :
we are running out of time .. Please do something

well Mohamed I wouldn’t kick Afellay and Babel out without good reason, and this isn’t reason enough. I haven’t seen De Guzman and Emanuelson for instance do anything more special. Afellay is experiencing a dip in form, but that doesn’t say anything about his talent, cause he’s no less than Nasri for instance. Plus Babel earned credit with me by his pre-season so far.
I’d say defence needs to be looked at, for the rest, there are some situations that are a bit uncertain like V.d.Vaart.
But i feel Babel should at least get a chance of showing his worth in PL, if this is another year of the same, by december, we’ll know and Elia or someone else will be in for him, same for Afellay, V.Marwijk doesn’t just pick his squad blindly. If someone is severely underperfoming for a while, that player will know it.

Posted from  Netherlands

Hey alex , i can’t deny that babel and afellay are talented players , but i am sorry to say that they aren’t grown enough to play for holland , especially afellay , i can’t remember a game he was involved in , and then he added something to the team , he plays very good for psv , but with the national team .. he is only a useless dribbler ! Babel is a clown , he needs to be more serious , needs to remember that he is playing for his country , not in a ghetto !

Seriously Brafhied had a good game but he is not nearly as good as Gio (dispite what you may think of Gio’s age). We have a good balance of young and old on this team and they are needed.

Further, I think you are all being too critical with Ooijer and Mathijsen. They both played well and pressured the England forwards well. What more can you ask for. We wouldn’t need to rely on them so much if our midfield players didn’t fall asleep and let England get back in the game. For some reason, they decided to play long hopeful balls in to the forwards and that is not our game. Notice that in the second half there was an absence of short passes and dibbles from our midfield. Instead they kept turning over the ball. My only critism of Ooijer is that he lacks pace.

The first English goal was all Heitinga.

Seriously, did you really think we would be able to kill off the game against England? That is a serious tactical error against a top side. Wishful thinking, even if I can’t stand the English side. 9 draws between these sides… are the friendlies between England and Holland a little too friendly? That is another question all together.

De Jong was man of the match in my view. Van der Vaart also had a good game and should have been left on. Kuyt, Van Persie and Robben also played well. The ususal suspects. Our fringe players need more work, so it was good to see them chase the ball around in the second half.

Posted from  Canada

anybody else notice lack of crosses, when hunter is in thier we gotta help him out with some balls in the box

all i can say is this is wc season. all players should wait after wc2010 to have babies and if sylvie is not cancer free come june, vdv can stay home because i don’t want a 2008 repeat.

Posted from  United States

Looking at the highlights, Dirk Kuyt’s goal was pretty darn lucky. Why didn’t he just drop it off to Persie for a wide open net? Instead he strikes from a diffucult angle with a defender on the post….pretty lucky that ball got by him. Robben also has a tendency to do this ….not look up to make the obvious goal scoring pass and instead try to force it. C’mon guys, lets be smarter.

No one wants a 2008 repeat michel ,
but if you are serious about dropping vdv out of the squad if sylvie is not a cancer free by next june , so you most likely don’t want to see vdv in SA .
cancer therapy takes a long time my friend , sometimes for 2 or 3 years

friends i will give you my conclusion on the match tomorrow now time to sleep and as we say in french “la nuit porte conseil” @+

Guys I agree with David. Everyone should relax there is plenty of time until the WC. All these questions will be settled by time, player form, club form and so on.
@Jason, seriously how can you say Gio is a better defender than Braafheid. Gio was never trained as a left back. He started in MF and played most of his career at that position. He is not a natural defender, whereas Braafheid is. He also has speed which we cruelly lack. look how he came back to catch Defoe. He almost took the ball away. Gio would still be in MF. I always liked Gio at Arsenal and Barca (also a really nice guy and I am sure an excellent captain and teammate) but he is a real liability in defense.

Posted from  United States

a couple of quick comments (don’t to repeat what others have said):

1. it’s just a friendly, players are trying to avoid injury and still lacking rythm and form and generally focusing on the upcoming season instead of today’s game, so no need to panick. another thing is that by the time england scored we had already replaced a number of our better players which would not have happened in a real match.

2. not sure why so many people think that heitinga should not be in the squad. yeah he made a pretty bad mistake, leading to england’s second goal, but so did rio on kuyt’s goal…do you really think that the english fans are calling for rio to be left out of the squad for england’s next match? that’s just the lack of focus on the players’ part showing through and leading to errors that they would not normally make. heitinga showed today that for the most part he is solid defensively and good in the air, which is very valuable against certain opposition. and yes if you want more speed/attack than you would put van der wiel in. however its worth remembering that if schaars had trouble adjusting to the level/pace of play today (he admited as much) than we can’t really expect van der wiel to be able to jump right in and become a regular starter, he’s going to need a bit of time still. but it would be nice to give him a chance in upcoming matches.

3. i agree that braafheid played a pretty good game, but i’m also pretty sure that he played defoe on-side on england’s first goal as the rest of the back four actually had defoe in an off-side position. not being able to read the game like that is to be expected with younger defenders and is one area where gio is generally pretty good.

4. the team/squad looks pretty good, all we really need is to find a replacement for oijer when playing against fast strikers (and there are a number of options that we can try there, so its not like we are completely stuck) and the rest will fall into place as players get into game form. Really our biggest worries at this point are players riding the bench at madrid and injuries to key players right before the WC.

Posted from  Canada

@igor brilliant comment i agree with all those things

Posted from  United States

To sum up the game – We played OK in the first half and England played OK in the second half. There was no brilliance on either side. My biggest concern was the lack of forward movement from both fullbacks. We are always more dangerous when our full backs make the extra winger (vd Wiel & Gio). Thats the one thing that I thought was really missing last night.

Posted from  Singapore

@Jason: “Van der Vaart also had a good game and should have been left on.”; did you actually see the match?? and Gio is too old, hes done in Oranje as far as im concerned..

to all who say we should be to critical or panic ; we can always be critical but indeed no need to panic; its not like we have any change for WC glory anyway

and i really dont know why people say Alaa isnt a real fan when he says about the team that they sucked…they did…anyone calling me not a real fan???

@Stephen ; very right about Kuijt, he was lucky to score and should have passed it to vPersie, same with Robben twice..

Posted from  Netherlands

Apart from the goal I thought vdv sucked as well as Sneider, but hey when they are in rhythm they are great to watch. As a new recruit my vote goes to Braafheid. Also hoping Vlaar continues his improvement and then makes it back to Oranje.

Posted from  Singapore

i agree with alex, van maarwijk has got it wrong, huntelaar certainly is the main striker for holland,, hope he wil get a place in the world cup,,, he never got a gud chance to show his class… not in 2006 world cup and even in 2008 EC he was on the bench most of the time.

Posted from  Australia

I don’t think V Marwijk doubts Huntelaar. For all we know, Bert discussed Klaas Jan fitness with him or even AC Milan and decided not to play him. The guy had hardly trained!! He won’t play for Milan for quite a while because of this.