Van Basten has a problem

Fans of good football haven’t had their cake to eat for some time in Holland… In the crucial duel against Rumania, Dutch finest plodded along for 90 minutes without creating one real good chance to score.

The best example was Huntelaar, in the 75th minute. He didn’t had a chance to score at all, but once he did have that miniscule opportunity, he passed the ball to Sneijder. Who was easily blocked… That little scene explained the whole match.

The booing from the stands already started in the first half, people sang lullabies and some fans begged for changes on the pitch. But, with the game totally locked up, van Basten didn’t change things and decided to leave his starters to plod along. The ever hungry Kuyt was doing his warm up runs and pinchhitter Koevermans was eagerly awaiting his debut, but who would come onto the pitch in the 80st minute? Left back Emanuelson… Milan star Seedorf got only four minutes to relief the tired van der Vaart…

“We felt those two central defenders were too strong. We felt a pinchhitter wouldn’t solve our problem, he would only bog down what we were doing there anyway.” Van Basten later explained.

“We felt we needed to break them down playing creative football. We hoped for that one moment of Robben, Huntelaar or Babel. Alas, it wasn’t to be.”

All hopes and good intentions… But the indestructable Rumanians had a different scenario in mind. Van Basten doubted the cooperation between Vaart and Sneijder and decided to bench De Zeeuw (?). This broke the tradition in Oranje, putting the center midfielder in the offensive role (Sneijder) instead of the controlling role (De Zeeuw). And as a result, it was van der Vaart trying to control midfield.

But that didn’t change anything. Oranje needed to break Rumania with good football, but it couldn’t. Yes, they tried. Very hard even. Sneijder had cramp at the end of the match, as a result of a lot of pointless running to at least get in ball possession. All for nothing.

Oranje was again confronted with the extreme difficulty of the playing-style chosen. When you want to attack – and the opponent wants to defend – there’s not a lot of space or time. The ball needs to go fast from foot to foot and in a splitsecond you need to find the striker with that half a meter of space. It didn’t work out. Mainly because the build up from the back is slow and mediocre. We miss strategists at the back like Frank de Boer, Ronald Koeman and Ruud Krol in the past. Having said that, where does that leave Oranje in the future? Slovenia will probably play the same game as Rumania and within that four day gap, van Basten won’t find that center striker with the pass De Boer has and the vision of Cocu.

“We are facing this issue for years now”, van Basten sighed, “and to be honest…I do not see a solution or alternative. We have to pick defenders who are secure, but in terms of build up, it’s not good enough. They should be able to bring more in that aspect of the game…”

source: www.ad.nl