Stirrin’ the pot

April 10th, 2006 | By: Mike | 1 Comment »

My colleague in charge of the Serbia and Montenegro team blog has made a few disparaging comments about my beloved Oranje. I’m not quite sure how to respond to them. I won’t lower myself and will therefore reject name calling and instead look towards the facts. The Dutch qualified with a goal difference of +24. I don’t care what defense you have, that’s awfully good. The “Plavi” had a difference of +15. While the Dutch played two more games they still won 10 out of the twelve, their second tie being inconsequential after beating the Czechs to qualify well before their last game. Serbia and Montenegro merely won 6 out of their 10 while drawing 4. The Dutch allowed only 3 goals despite sharing a group with the qualifiers’ top scoring team. The Netherlands rank 6th, while their supposed “betters” lie a distant 22, one place behind Latvia.

Lastly, I’ll name a few of the clubs employing some of the squad. Manchester United, Arsenal FC, Chelsea, Hamburg SV, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Valencia, Ajax, PSV Eindhoven, Tottenham. With the wealth of experience present in the squad, how can there be any comparison?

Tags: Better than You, Netherlands, Serbia and Montenegro

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Comments

By Lyle | April 11th, 2006 at 12:24 pm

Statistis, schmatistics… the Netherlands aren’t no better than the great “Plavi”. We play defense, you guys focus on colorful play and scoring.

We’ll see if you can score against the world’s best defense in Leipzig.

Seriously though, the Netherlands is a great footballing country. Lots of wonderful and fashionable players. Serbia and Montenegro respect them.

… but, you know, Eastern European and Balkans football isn’t widely known, like Dutch football and that’s just because Eastern Europe isn’t a popular as Wester Europe. people just don’t know or understand Easter Europe. they understand the Netherlands though, and the the Netherlands is a part of the affluent West and can have Champions’ League caliber teams. Eastern Europe cannot do that yet and our players suffer a little bit for it.

Regardless our players play for teams like Inter Milan, auf Schalke, Hertha, Manchester United, and Olympiakos. And they play in all the big Western European leagues… even in the great Netherlands (Queen Beatrix supposedly has a thing for Serbian and Montenegrin men). Dutch players are just more fashionable (although often because they’re good players).

Anyway, best of luck in Leipzig. Let the best team win.

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