Kessler should be sacked…hes the biggest assh. in dutch football

Bert will want to start with a clean slate.

I an organization when your boss is about to leave is true that you might relax yourselft but in sports when you are playing such a big tournament like an European Championship or a World Cup the motivation is not to impress your manager but to win the tournament…this players are top sportsmen so they know that all the football world will be watching them at this tournament and they will want to impress so they can continue playing in their teams or get new deals with better clubs.

Van Basten will want to win the tournament and if he goes to Ajax right after the tournament it doesn´t matter because while he is coach of Oranje he will have the chance to win a medal that the Netherlands have only won once. I think the players and the coach will do their best to win the trophy and it is going to be very hard but the chance is there and we have the team to do it.

Hup Holland!

EC08 constitutes many matches (at least we all hope so) against top opposition. I am NOT saying EC08 is a time to experiement by any means, but it is a chance for the new coach (if he has already been put in place) to talk to the squad, get to know them better, build a good rapport and give some of the older players who may be thinking about international retirement after EC08 an idea about what is to come for WC10. I don’t see why at the very least having the new guy come along to EC just like England did with Ericsson & McLaren would do any harm. The fact that McLaren is a crap manager and wouldn’t be able to manage to find his way out of a phone booth no matter what you do, has nothing to do with it. But at least when he came in, there was pretty much zero player rumblings after Ericsson, which there easily could have been.

While I appreciate MVB being upfront with his future plans early on, I still don’t believe humans perform at their highest level if they know they will get a new boss. Pulling on the Oranje shirt will always be plenty of motivation for everyone, however that little “extra” from some of the younger lads would be a tad easier to bring to front if the “new” boss was at least sitting on the bench and living with the team during both the prep as well as the EC08 tournament itself.

The transition would at the very minimum be a lot smoother. As muh as I adored MVB as a player, I don’t think he deserves a lap of honour as a coach. In fact, I think he would need all the help he could get given the group Oranje is facing.

I don’t understand why that’s important. It’s not like at club level that players aren’t motivated to work with a coach that will be released or something. To me, if a coach will be released because the players don’t see it in him anymore, then there’s grounds to fire him on the spot. That is not the case here. Like Verbeek and Brandts will finish the season at Heerenveen and NAC (and look how these teams are doing), I think Marco can finish his job. I don’t think it will have any negative effect on the players’ motivation. It may even have a positive effect. I think it was good of Marco to announce his leave early, so the KNVB could take their time to get the right man in.

I understand the sentiment of some posters here, who’d like to see Marco leave, but honestly, his leaving after the EC shouldn’t be an argument for that.