I’ve been quite vocal in any of the forum I am participating in
(including this one) in saying who should Bert should call or not. I
said it before that Elia, Brama and Bakkal were all deserving their
chances. I’d say the same for Stam who, to my view, is also a worthy recipient of the call up. To me, it’s more than just a player preference, whom I like and whom I don’t. It is a justice simply being done. No more of this bullcrap “secret” selection process. Get down to the basic principle, i.e. if you don’t play week-in and week-out, no shirt number for you in the national team. Why? Because you won’t have any rhytm what-so-ever, exactly like Babel and Huntelaar had recently testified.

Three direct implications: first, with a clear selection process, every team members, regardless of their popularity rating, are responsible for their own actions. If they play regularly, good for them. If their minutes get pinched for whatever reason, go figure out. Either train harder, or assess your situation. Maybe the club (playing style, environment, culture, etc) is not suited for you– in such case you may want to ask to be loaned or transferred out. The second implication is that with this approach, you would motivate the all the other players to show what they’ve go, especially the youngsters. You would get an extra shot of motivation knowing that if you play hard every week for your club, you may as well get a call from the national coach to train with the bests in the nation. Think also the reverse, if you play great, but you are second in the NT to a guy who warms out some club’s bench, what’s in it?

Finally, the third implication, which I think the most important, is that a clear policy would protect the youths and their future. How so? Well, again, if you don’t perform regularly, then your chances to receive invitation is next to nothing. So big-headed youngsters (who is full of ambitions, whether it’s money or fame) should think twice before they secure their transfers. The appeal of getting tons of dough abroad may be canceled out with the chance of getting precious minutes back in Eredivisie which might lead to an eventual call-up to the national team. I am sure you’re nodding along right now because you have succesfully identified one player who opted for a headliner move, and ended up ruining his career.

Again, the idea is NOT that by calling up a (random) player, you can hit a jackpot and find a new messiah for the NT. The hope is that by getting down to the common sense, the NT training camp can become an interactive and competitive venue for talent showcase, and hopefully get a trophy or two along the way.

On another note, I think it’s funny to hear many people here complain so much about BvM because he is sticking to the same team for the most part (and we should note that it’s exactly what he said he would do). When Van Basten was coach, there were so many people complaining about how he never stuck to a set team and always tried out new players. Now that BvM comes in and does try to gel a team and use the same core players, all these people are complaining again! It just goes to show, some people will complain about anything.

For that matter, Babel has only played good in the eredivisie I guess, never seen him play there so no idea but we all know the eredivisie gives a wrong impression of the quality of certain players (Engelaar, Schaars).

maybe so, but Babel lacks vision. He’s worse than Robben when he’s on the ball, at least Robben has an excuse when he’s doing his tricks he needs to keep his eye on the ball. Babel usually doesn’t know where he’s going and when he gets there (creates space for himself by passing a defender for example) he still doesn’t know what to do next to create a chance. Robben does know this and shoots and creates goals for the team. The amount of chances Babel creates with his speed always get balanced out by the amount of times he lacks vision to do something with it.

OK, most of this might have to do with Babel not being able to play on the wing, but whenever he’s playing central striker his positioning isn’t always that much better either, nor his finishing.

Hunter should be selected when back in form, Babel should never have been selected and should not be selected now unless he has a game/goal ratio of 1:1 in the last 10 games of this season.

I hate that Babel is wriggling his way back in the team because he what, scored 1 beautiful goal for Liverpool in about…what…20 games or so?