Satisfied, but changes will come…

“For Albania, we’ll make changes where we can,” said Marco van Basten late Saturday night in the Amsterdam Arena.

It was just minutes after the 2-0 Bulgaria victory but the team manager was serious. And he repeated what he said two weeks ago when announcing the 25 head group.

Van Basten: ,,We need a fresh and motivated group for two matches. Two internationals in four days is asking too much physically and mentally. In the second match, you always see problems caused by fatigue. And at this level, that can be lethal. And since we have lots of players who are close in level, why not change the team severely?”.

During the training session today and tomorrow Van Basten and Van’t Schip will determine which players have given too much against Bulgaria for the Albania match. At the end of the match Saturday, some players were clearly tired or had little pains and injuries. Like Demy de Zeeuw who played a very good match, but watched the remainder from the bench with an icepack on his achilles. “Instead of De Zeeuw, I can play De Jong, Afellay or Van der Vaart.”

If Marco choses Afellay, we’d see a repeat of the scenario of last double qualification, against Rumania and Slovenia. Afellay wasn’t part of the first group, but made his debut against Slovenia four days later.

Last match against Albania, at home in Holland, almost ended in a disaster. With 2-0 on the boards, Oranje got in severe trouble and the Albanian goal was scored after Oranje lost possession and our whole midfield was played out of position. Oranje’s history in double qualification matches is not too rosy, to say the least. In 2005, Oranje won 0-2 against the Czech in Prague only to play 0-0 later in Amsterdam against Macedonia.

Clarence Seedorf was the other remarkable player. The AC Milan midfielder and winner of 4 CL cups had to come on the pitch twice in the last six minutes to relief injured team mates. This promptly led to a one-on-one personal meeting between Seedorf and Van Basten. Later Van Basten admitted that “the forced replacements looked a bit clumsy…”…

The former Ajax and Madrid midfielder is one of the players who can count on a starting position against Albania. With Melchiot getting a yellow card last Saturday, there are ten Oranje players “sharp” as we call that. That could play a role in Van Basten’s gameplan as well.

Five of the sharpies are from the creative part: Sneijder, Van Persie, Seedorf and Van der Vaart. If one of them gets another yellow, he’ll be out for the most important match to come, Rumania away.

Some coaches would reason that, with a nice win in the bag, let’s let this team do it. Let’s build some consistency. When asked after the match which player he would definitely not replace for the Albania match, he said: “There is no player I want to keep in the team per se…”