JC: Silly discussion on wingers

JC’s column in the Telegraaf and on JC’s website:

Barcelona – And for the first time, the results weren’t there. Mainly because Oranje had it tough in the second half with the wind in the back. And the problem was, that the team didn’t know how to handle that defensively.

When you have the wind coming at you (against you) the deep balls of the opponent will fly through and will become hard to chase for their strikers. When you have the wind coming from behind you, their deep played balls will lose speed and fall nicely between the last line of defense and the goalie, making it easier for them to counter attack you. And when you want to put pressure on them, your defense line will move up and the space between defense and goalie gets bigger. So, in the second half, Oranje started to hang back more in order to make that space smaller and therefore easier to defend. But at the same time, we couldn’t put enough pressure on them anymore and they were almost invited in to put pressure on us. A classic mistake.

A potential solution would be to play va banque and give it your all offensively. All the way, forechecking, on their half of the pitch. With a lot of risk, sure, but also a fair chance of scoring one or two goals. But, if you do it and you fail to score, the whole world will attack you and say it was too reckless to play like that.

But, I did see some positive points in the first half. The circumstances were tough, but Oranje played reasonably good. Although you would expect more from the strikers. Also in the second half, I didn’t see enough individual stuff from the strikers, although this was typically a match where there was space for that. And people highly criticize the last line of defense, but conceding only three goals in ten matches is definitely not bad.

And there is no real problem of course. Holland can still qualify on their own terms. If we win the two coming home games against Slovenia and Luxembourg we can’t go wrong. Romania and Bulgaria need to play against each other and one of the two – or both – will spill points.

I expect that Oranje will qualify for the EC. But then what? It’s clear that the build up from the back needs improvement to enable dominant and offensive football. And, our wingers need to play deeper, to get them into one-to-one situations. Now, they play to much “hanging”, on midfield, which makes it easy for opponents to clock up the space with more personnel. And that’s a shame since we have the players up front who can force decisions.

I also follow the ongoing debate on left-footed wingers on the right and vice versa. In amazement, I might add. One of the most attractive teams in the world, Barcelona, plays with the right-footed Ronaldinho on the left and the left footed Messi on the right. At this level, you expect your top players to be two-footed plus it is a great advantage if your winger can cross inwards and come to the center, taking on their opponents on their weak foot. Normally, players like Babel, Van Persie and Van der Vaart are very capable of playing like this, at least a few times every game. And they are known to score goals from these positions at their respective clubs. So, let’s bury that discussion quickly.