Possible Line up Oranje as published by the AD paper

It’s been the case for donkey’s years (or at least since the last world cup) that only Robben and Van Persie can unlock a lot of teams. The rest of the side does a great job of possession football, but those two are always the cutting edge.

Posted from  Japan

So, Sneijder is in good form. Van Persie is in good form (injured, but form ok). So, which one is selected by Bert? It is clear now that VdV will only enter the pitch in the second half.

Posted from  Indonesia

missed Vaart goal. could someone upload the video? or link please….thanks

Posted from  Australia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ByQSQ99nQ

baring any injury, we are going to be debating sneijder vs van persie for a year

what about kuyt vs sneijder vs van Persie. I still like

huntelaar

robben sneijder van persie

there is enough defense to not need kuyts work ethic and van Persie (leading premiership in assists) is more offensive

Here we go again. Lets sit the most consistent Holland player who just happened to score 2 goals today, ran his socks off as usual, and was man of the match.

What is wrong with you Dutch? What does Kuyt really need to do to get any credit? He’s playing his best football of his career at the moment, both club and country, and you want to put him on the bench?

@sonneveld ,agreed already we have two hardworking holding mids(vanbommel,dejong,schaars,da silva)all of them are hardworking so we need more creativity infront.our top creative players are vaart,persie,znijder,Roban either znijder or vaart can be benched with hunter or Nestelrooy we will have most brilliant attacking in the world with tremendes skills.ie
——Hunter——
Roban-Persie-Vaart
and in bench
———Nestel———-
Babel/Amrabat-znijder-afleey/castelen
i think backline and holding mids are already fixed

Posted from  India

@finnister already we have six diffencive players and one goal keeper in the pitch.For me kuyt is harworker with good footballing brain with zero skills and tricks.i couldnt see any prolific things in his two goals.see the hunter goal and look at his finishing wow,really great.kuyt second goal was very lucky it didnt bombarded with opposite diffender.When we play kuyt infront of goal i bet he will waste lots of chances .ie if he is getting 10 chances he may score one goal or two.At the same time nestel or hunter or vanpersie will score minimum FIVE goals.especially in knockouts you need terrific finishers like brazil ronaldo,davor succer croatia,romario,bergkamp etc.so that is the difference.Then let us go to rightwing when we play KUYT there our right wing is impotent in creativity against small teams and physically strong teams i agree we can play with kuyt.but in knockout matches against Germany,brazil,italy,Arjentina,,Brazil we should play with more tricky players.so that at least we may get a penalty.through that we can win the match.if roban and persie and vaart are getting injury at time of of WC2010 our stage will be horrible,but iam lookin for correct replacement of these players with amrabat,castelen,Afaleey?(i doubt) ,babel,Elia etc

Posted from  India

@Tijiu: Kuyt had an assist against Italy, a goal against France, are they top teams? I was expecting miracle from Robben, Sneijder, Van Persie and VDV against Portugal and Russia. It never happened. It’s not just throwing as many as creative players into the field and one of them will score. I’m not saying that Kuyt should always start but we have different players and all are good. We should choose the right one for the right match.

Don’t know about anyone else but here are my top 3 performers for the night
1. Bommel
2. Sneijder (more first half than second)
3. Kuyt (from my little computer screen I thought it was Robben being freed up by Sneider down the left wing. Great goal !)

But guys de Jong was magnificent – Robben unstoppable – Hunter always a threat. We have a dearth of talent not even 1998 possesed. Whether you like it or not our “fragile” defence is setting new records. Mathijsen to me seems to get more solid with every game and can read it so well.

And ….. did anyone notice how Affelay cut thru the Macs like a hot knife thru butter?

Posted from  Singapore

Carlos:

I agree with you on everything. I think our expectations are too high always but Joris Mathijsen would be a starter in many of the top teams in the world. He has developed as a player and he is a secure defender. What happens is that we always compare him to Frank de Boer but Mathijsen will never be as technical as Frank was. But he is strong, knows how to build up and has great personality. I think he does a great partnership with Ooijer but Andre is pretty old now and I think van Marwijk should try a new defender over Ooijer, the best candidate is Heitinga but he has had many times to show his quality and although he sometimes impresses with good level of football he sometimes fails miserably.

The other doubt is Stekelenburg who by the way I can´t believe he is being benched by van Basten. Van Basten handed him his Oranje debut and now favours an unexperienced and mediocre keeper over Stekelenburg juts because Marten had a bad time. Where is the confidence from his coach?. Well, that´s another topic but I think that Stekelenburg has to be without doubts our first choice keeper. And the toughest of all decisiones, up front who will be in the bench. Van Persie is playing great, Robben and Kuyt playing top level and Sneijder reaching his real level again.
I´d put van Bommel in front of Mathijsen and alongside de Jong I would put Sneijder, the first with more defensive duties and of course Sneijder with the creation.

1- Stekelenburg
2- v. der Wiel
3- Mathijsen
4- van Bommel (like Rijkaard in Ajax´s 95)
5- Bouma
6- de Jong
7- Kuyt(3 goals in two games)
8- Sneijder
9- Huntelaar
10- van Persie
11- Robben

With this line up the only player who has proven his value but would have to be ready to go to the bench would be van der Vaart unless he moves to another team, recover his real level and then he would have to convince van Marwijk that he can compete for a place. But the our strongest line up could look something like that. Let´s hope Bouma can gain some confidence again after coming from injury…We are in S. Africa 2010.

Arjentina 1-6 Bolivia why?is it coz of high altitude?i think yes arjentina would have tried for victory in th high alitude.and they conceded one goal early and even from that deficit they tried to win the match.that lead them to a heavy defeat.this incident is teaching lession for all top teams.whenever we play against we need to be in our toes till 90 minutes,otherwise this type of incident can occur.

Posted from  India

@tiju: Yes we have to be on our toes, but we do not have an overweight football legend with a crack coke habit running our team. Big difference.

Finn, Maradona was AGAINST the original FIFA ruling NOT to allow any FIFA matches above a height of 3000m. So he would be hypocrytical if he blamed the altitude. Furthermore his team only arrived at La Paz a few hours before kick off. Guess the old story still holds true for opposing teams there as they never learn how to Paz.

Posted from  Singapore

@finn ha ha,thats why we select slim beauty Bert van marvijk.KNVB read it very earlier.

Posted from  India

Nepotism?

Posted from  Japan

And I used to be of the opinion that Kuyt didn’t deserve a place in the side, because there were players of more quality – but he’s really improved for Liverpool this season, and proven he can play that right spot too. I don’t think there’s any way you could play Persie or Sneijder there over him now. I’d like BVM to be more ready to replace one of the DMF with Sneijder and play Van Persie behind the striker though.

Posted from  Japan

Wow, what a game!! I know our detractors will try and say “it’s only Macedonia”, but Macedonia is not an easy team to play against, as we’ve experienced ourselves in recent years. Usually games against them are tight, physical and not very good football. Not yesterday though! We dominated, play exciting football, created many chances without conceding any real chances ourselves. Like Jeroen noted, it even looked like aspects of total football were making a long awaited comeback!

I was very impressed with the game. Some points I noticed:
- We were dominating and had the right attitude – chasing the ball, always pressuring, always pressing and winning the ball back everywhere on the field. Everyone, from defenders up to forwards was trying to win the ball back and we were constantly causing them to turn it over, usually before they even made it close to our goal.

- We played hard and physical. Usually games like this are characterized by the lesser team playing very physical and roughing up the better team – not this time! We didn’t look like a bunch of pushovers and really stuck in – the best (obviously) being Van Bommel and De Jong, but I think their influence is wearing off on the rest of the team as well.

- Kuyt was fantastic! Not only did he score two goals (as if that’s not enough!), but he was great at holding up the ball and joining in the passing. In his current form, I don’t think we should consider anyone else over him to play on the right wing. Van Persie is a great player, but he’s not a winger so I don’t think he should play out there (he should be the shadow striker). Robben is better on the left wing (and him and Kuyt are great switching back and forth anyways). Afellay looks good, but he’s still probably better suited as a sub at this point. Other than that, who else do we have at such a high level? No one.

- Robben is fantastic, especially on the left wing. I don’t know what Bert said to Arjen, but Robben is playing so unselfishly and really contributing to the build up, setting up tons of chances. He’s even tracking back to defend… amazing!

- Sneijder is back to his best, just looked fantastic in the middle of the park setting up chance after chance.

- Van der Vaart showed why Ramos is an idiot for benching him. Even when he isn’t getting any playing time at his club, he can come on as a late sub when the rest of his team is letting of the gas pedal and show a flash of brilliance. Class player, hope he finally starts getting some minutes.

- Some people have said that the second half was not so good (true, only comparing to the first half though) and that it was because Robben got subbed. I don’t think so. Robben was fantastic, of course, but we weren’t reliant on him. It’s just natural that a team that is 3-0 at half will kind of ease off in the second half. Even so, we still created a bunch of chances, and Babel had 3 breakaways ruled offside – 2 of which were wrongly called offside.

- Our passing and ball control was great. So many short quick passes, and such good control that we turned the ball over very few times.

Posted from  Canada

As if that wasn’t long enough already, I forgot two more small points:
- Huntelaar is awesome, what a classy finish for his goal. There’s obviously no replacing Ruud, but you could certainly do a lot worse than the Hunter!
- Mathijsen looks very solid in the back – and apparently very solid physically as well, taking that flying elbow by Steks and still playing the rest of the game like nothing happened! Not the greatest in the build up, but defensively we can’t complain.

Posted from  Canada

@ejb, thanks for the link

Posted from  Australia