Sunday Bloody Sunday?

Let the nail-biting commence. The tournament has well and truly begun as of today. Tomorrow the Dutch face their sternest test yet since Marco van Basten took charge. The Dutch have not lost a competitive match since van Basten took charge (their only lost came against Italy in a friendly with the Dutch fielding an experimental defense) and indeed they have only failed to win three of the 15 matches played.

There will be changes on Sunday, oh yes there will be. Would anyone argue that Khalid Boulahrouz does not merit a starting position alongside Andre Ooijer? No, I didn’t think so. I expect van der Vaart to start in place of van Bommel - as does the linked article below - and I am prepared to go to the matresses (props to the one who can identify the quote) to fight for Tim de Cler and his starting requisition. All three players did well against Argentina.

The big question remains about Ruud van Nistelrooy. Will he start? More importantly, should he start? There is no time left to take chances. Ruud is aboslute quality however and all he needs is a sniff of goal. I think it has to do the style of play. Often the attacks come from the wings inward and with the wingers don’t have a pop at goal it often gets laid back to the attacking midfielders leaving Ruud covered by the two central defenders. We saw a good example of Ruud’s positional skills against the Ivory Coast and it also showed that it could work. Perhaps Ruud needs to be dropping deeper into not quite the tip of the attack that he is so fond of. He is a superb distributor of the ball and might be able to be prolific from there.