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Weak Oranje beats Japan, 3-0.

September 5th, 2009 | By: Jan | 17 Comments »

Van Persie scores the 1-0

Oranje tested the patience of the fans in De Veste in Enschede against Japan. In the final phase of the game, a weak Oranje shrugged the tenacious Japan off, winning 3-0.

Elia, the former Twente player, made the difference in the second half as a sub, giving two assists.

Holland didn’t create anything in the first half. One slight chance was there, for Gunner Van Persie. Dirk Kuyt created space for the ex-Feyenoord player, but his shot was aimed too high.

The Japanese, who secured their ticket to the WC already like Holland, dominated the game. Lots of movement, good working ethics and the ability to disrupt Oranje’s build up play.

The Dutch eleven, more gifted than the Japan team on paper, didn’t seem to have the inspiration to break down the Japanese. There were no real pace-acceleration activities by – for instance – Sneijder and hardly any surprising situation. The fans in Enschede were bored.

Bert van Marwijk did bring some new blood into the team. Van der Wiel played his fourth game, and it wasn’t Stijn Schaars but David Mendes Da Silva who took Van Bommel’s spot.

Michel Vorm replaced the injured Stekelenburg. He played his second cap. Glenn Loovens was the fifth debutant under Van Marwijk, which didn’t really come as a surprise.

Compared to the England game, Gio van Bronckhorst and Wesley Sneijder were back in the starting eleven, at the expense of Braafheid and Raf van der Vaart.

After the break, two other players made their debut: Piet Velthuizen on goal and Elia as winger. The HSV player made the difference. At Japan’s side, Keisuke Honda played in the second half, the VVV Venlo sensation.

Elia, the danger man

Elia was the go-to-guy at Oranje. First he tested the Japan goalie’s fists and later on he’d give the assist to Van Persie, who scored a zinger in the 70est minute.

Sneijder scored the 2-0 with a precision shot, but the Inter man had to be stretchered of after a cynical Honda tackle. Klaas Jan Huntelaar upped his stats with the third goal, again on an Elia assist.

Team manager Bert van Marwijk was not a happy trooper. He immediately went over to the Slovenian ref to apologize for the aggressive game of Nigel de Jong and Wesley Sneijder.

Bert was annoyed. But not with Ernie this time…

Both players were yellow carded for their cynical fouls. “We were frustrated in the first half. The Japanse didn’t allow us to play our favorite game. The way you deal with it, is not like De Jong and Sneijder did. You gotta up your pace, stick to your pass and move game and accelerate the game. But De Jong and Sneijder decided to punish the players with aggro tackles. I’m not happy. I was pretty annoyed actually and I told them so during half time. Sneijder was lucky not to be red-carded, in all honesty. So, I apologized to the ref for these fouls and I will have a serious talk to the lads. It’s unacceptable. This kind of thing can cost you the title at the WC.”

Skipper Gio van Bronckhorst was crystal clear about the game. “It was really bad. We played a disappointing match. It was too sloppy, too slow… The build up suffered and Japan put pressure on our midfield, which made it hard for them to settle into the game. I’d say: well done Japan, badly done Holland.”

Oranje scored a late goal to open the account. “It’s great to have someone like Elia on the bench. He’s able to break open a game. This is his quality and you can see how important it is, when the team is stuck. One flash of brilliance and suddenly we’re 1-0 up and the game is ours.”

The man himself: “Actually, the first assist on Van Persie wasn’t that good. It was too high, but with Robin, it doesn’t matter how the ball comes. He’s so gifted, he can control balls with his chest, his head, his thigh… The Huntelaar cross is almost my specialty. I did those often at Twente, with N’Kufo coming in at the far post. It was wonderful to make my debut in Oranje and double great to be in Enschede with my debut.”

The 22 year old was allowed to replace the disappointing Robben. “The coach said to me, just play like you do in Hamburg. And I did. I already improved so much in Germany. I’m more a midfield wide player there and therefore I have more possession. I’m happy with my personal performance tonight. It was great to get all the kudos from the more experienced lads.”

Van Marwijk: “It’s simple. Elia is a top class player and he demonstrated that here.”

Van Marwijk also allowed Loovens his debut. “It’s interesting, Loovens plays in Scotland against strong static strikers. Now he needed to play against quick and agile little runners… And he did ok. He needed to flick a switch and he did.”

Sneijder injured…

Van Marwijk at first thought Sneijder’s injury was serious. “Wes said he heard something snap. I think it’s a serious injury.” But the injury – luckily – is not that bad. Sneijder was examined in hospital and his ligaments in his ankle were stretched, but not broken or torn. The medical staff will determine on Monday if Sneijder is able to play against Scotland on Wednesday.

Tags: Group C, Honda, Japan, Loovens, Oranje, Persie, Sneijder. ELia, Van Marwijk, Vorm

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Comments

By Mario | September 5th, 2009 at 11:31 pm

Well…the thing now is try new stuff at the back and to define who will be the main striker because I doubt Kuyt has the potential for that spot.

But playing awful and win 3-0?. Not that bad, eh?.

By amunt valencia | September 6th, 2009 at 1:08 am

the goals were amazing
the scoreline neither reflects a below par performance by netherland nor the good fight japan put-they really impressed me esp that other nakamura(who doesnt play 4 espanyol)(i suck at remembering full name)

elia-one more performance like taht n babel will be the new bench warmer

really sorry for sneijder injury- a class player

Posted from Canada

By Jan | September 6th, 2009 at 1:33 am

Yeah, there was quite some disappointment and frustration among the posters here .

I couldn’t watch the game myself (they do air the Scotland game though, albeit 24 hours after the fact) but I will stay up for that.

Trying to have an objective view:

1. Friendlies are never impressive. It just doesn’t work with the Dutch boys. We need to have millions watching otherwise we can’t “find” that last 10%.

2. Japan is a horrible team to play against. They want to obstruct. They don’t want to create. Their coach had a perfect game plan against Oranje, with the aim of not losing. Oranje was tested and I think that was a good thing. A worthwhile lesson (and as Mario said: winning while playing bad is pretty good… Normally Italy, Germany and Portugal do that ).

3. Good build up from the back is essential. When our midfield and forwards are marked and ran down, we need a bloke at the back who can open up the game with one pass. Ooijer is not that man. Neither is Boulah. Maybe Heitinga. Maybe Loovens. Maybe Vlaar… Goose will hate me, but Engelaar might be the man for the job. Or Mark van Bommel one line back. Sneijder can move one line back into the holding position – a la Pirlo – making our build up stronger. I haven’t seen the game but from what I read our forwards didn’t move well enough either. That’s probably because it was a friendly. Normally, they move pretty good.

4. Messi, Robben, C Ronaldo, Henry, Riera, Elia, Cisse… Danger comes from the wings. With Robben and Elia we have two players who can break open games. Babel is not the man to do that. We don’t need Babel when we have Elia.

5. Dropping Schaars is a mistake. The people who say that judge him on the one England game. Trust me, Schaars is top class. Not too sure about Mendes Da Silva though.

6. De Jong needs to be reprimanded! Using your frustration like he did (and Sneijder) is detrimental to the team. Sneijder should be benched in view of his injury woes, De Jong for disciplinary reasons.

My eleven for Scotland:

Stekelenburg
Vd Wiel Loovens Mathijsen Gio
De Zeeuw Schaars
Kuyt Vaart Robben
Van Persie

By Caleb | September 6th, 2009 at 1:59 am

“Japan is a horrible team to play against. They want to obstruct. They don’t want to create. Their coach had a perfect game plan against Oranje, with the aim of not losing.” – Jan

I couldn’t disagree more Jan. I watch a lot of Japanese games, and in fact I was watching the Oranje game last night on Japanese television (in Japan), and Japan is not a team to play with the aim of “not losing”. The Japanese always want to win, the problem is that they are not good at scoring. The country produces excellent midfielders, and everybody on the team always works extremely hard and has excellent ball control; those are their pros. Their cons are that they rarely produce decent strikers, and that they have difficulty scoring a lot of goals. Put their pros and cons together and you get a team that always pressures, works hard to get the ball back, and is excellent at holding/passing the ball around in the midfield… which doesn’t result in many goals. It doesn’t mean they are only aiming to “not lose”. In fact, I’d say up until the first goal, Japan was playing much more creatively than we were.

On top of that, when you are a weaker team playing against a top team, you are always going to try to play really tight and work hard to shut down the other team. That’s not negative, that’s just smart.

I think they were a good team to play against because we seem to have trouble against these types of quick, hard working teams that are good at maintaining possession (Russia anyone?). And judging from the game last night, we still have more work to do in this area.

By Jeroen | September 6th, 2009 at 4:36 am

You said Bert wasn’t annoyed with Ernie, but now that I think about it, Sneijder kind of reminds me of Ernie.

I agree with Caleb, Japan was not there to “ruin” the game so to speak. They were aggressive, attacking, and creative. They looked like they were playing Holland’s game, but better. If they had a decent striker, it could have easily been 2-0 or 3-0 for them by half time (I have no idea why on that one cross ball the player tried to kick it when he could have just walked the ball into the goal with his head…)

Posted from Netherlands

By Jan | September 6th, 2009 at 5:08 am

@Caleb… I didn’t mean to be negative. I don’t think I even used that word. It’s more that they are very capable – with their work rate and dynamics – to disrupt our game. And obviously, they try to catch us out and run at us.

I think I even said it’s a perfect team to play against for us, because they demonstrate how “easy” it is to take us apart. Scotland, England, Italy, Germany…they all play “their own game” but Japan is tactically shrewd.

I never intended to have a go at them. I think they did well.

By Jan | September 6th, 2009 at 5:09 am

“Oranje was tested and I think that was a good thing” is what I said…

By Rami | September 6th, 2009 at 5:10 am

Jeroen,

“Gio will be the toughest to budge. He has the captain’s armband, and even though he gave a bad performance against japan, he still plays well in many games. I thought braafheid was convincing against england. I guess van Marwijk is waiting to see if Braafheid gets into the starting 11 at Bayern.
I think everyone but van Marwijk agrees that Kuyt should be on the right, and VP as striker. Things like that. But all in all, things are much more clear than with van Basten. The disadvantage is less experimentation, the advantage is a more gelled starting team at the WC.”

Those two points you mentioned are the main source of my criticism..

Everybody in here agrees with you that its just plain stupid for vmarwijk to be adamant to use kuyt as a striker, where he doesnt produce much, or at least less than when hes playing as a right winger.. I mean it really has not been the first time hes used him there, and it hasnt worked. what is Vmarwijk still waiting for i dont know!!

Gio being captain!!! Vmarwijk is really in a tough pickle.. what do u do?? demote your captain and be criticized for bad management as Vbasten did with Davids, or keep your captain in the starting 11, when surely everyone can see that he is too old and just not up for it anymore. I say use braafheid even if he hasnt nailed a starting position with Bayern. Actually should he play a good game with the national team, then maybe Vgaal would be much more confident of using him instead of pranjic.

And up until recently did he act on using a different back line than gio-mathijsen-ooijer-vdwiel.. and this is so wrong!!!!!! we’re just a year away. vdwiel, braafheid, Loovens are miles away from being mentally ready to face the WC challenges.. Dont you see that?? they need experience… they needed to face England for example.. Now its like that game never existed, because we had ooijer/heitinga playing.

Look we can mount a challenge to win the WC, but not with these preparations.. more and more we realize how the team is still not ready. Vmarwijk hasnt decided on his starting 11 yet, and its getting late, because most of our young players , they need at least a bit of experience before the WC.

its not all bad, and there is plenty of good, but there are a few ‘bad enough’s
Hope u understand our point of view. I really feel our stance has been justified.

Posted from Norway

By Jeff | September 6th, 2009 at 5:30 am

Rami, I think your analysis is too premature. You keep talking about a starting eleven for the WC but many teams don’t have a starting eleven. There could also be injuries, so it is silly to say that because VM does not have his starting eleven he is in a bad situation. Look at Engelaar and how he made his way into VB’s squad at the euro. If you go back to the 1988 and 1998 teams the starting eleven was not always known. Bosman started instead on VB, E Koeman appeared out of nowhere and so on. In 1998, the key was how to play Kluivert and Bergkamp, and also what to do with the midfield. When Kluivert got sent off it is Cocu who played forward (and then we beat Korea 5-0 although the beginning of that match was highly reminiscent of the game yesterday. I have it on tape and if you watch it again we were outplayed until Cocu scored. The teams 1988 and 1998 starting gelling as the tournament went on and especially after tough wins. This is precisely what we lacked in the last 2 major tournaments; the HUNGER and perhaps consistency to a lesser degree. I totally agree with Jeroen on those 2 points. Had we squeezed by Portugal in 06 and Russia in 08 I think we could have won. For that you need luck, composure and more luck. We did not have it with us. If the referee had sent off Kolodin as he should have at the end of the Russia match before the overtime, we would have won.
So please forget about not having enough time, there is plenty of time. New players bring freshness to the team and that is good. Again look at 04 we had all the youngsters then who had just emerged and it worked. Think positively and you could be surprised. Bottom line though; it doe snot matter what we say because I doubt that VM is reading this blog.

Posted from United States

By Rami | September 6th, 2009 at 5:56 am

I disagree again, im sorry.. And keep the premature attitude to yourself.

im not against still shuffling with my offensive/creative players, but what i am against is not having a permanent experienced back line!!! ESPECIALLY that our new back line are a bunch of young boys with no experience.

Something for you to think about.. were any of those youngsters/undecided starting players/all those that were presented right before a big tournament part of Oranje’s backline??? A backline that is supposed to be solid, unchanging and experienced. Take any major tournament, and look back at the consistency of Oranje’s back four, and then come back and tell what you have found jeff.

Posted from Norway

By Jan | September 6th, 2009 at 6:12 am

Oranje 1974… Israel, Laseroms, Hulshoff, Mansveld, Drost… All unavailable. Michels experimented and put midfielder Haan in as libero and young Rijsbergen – not unlike Loovens – as auszputzer.

I agree with what others said. The successful line up at a tournament is hardly ever the one you expect beforehand.

The new season hasn’t even started. De Jong is a questionmark. So is Rafael. And in my book, so is Huntelaar.

I personally believe Huntelaar and/or Van Nistelrooy will do well so one of those two will play center striker in Oranje.

If De Jong doesn’t make it at Man City, we have De Zeeuw, Schaars or even Sneijder to fill in.

I agree with you on the back four, we lack class there, but we already missed class in 2008. Loovens, Vlaar, vd Wiel, Marcellis…they’re all ideal youngsters to test now. I agree that it’s risky, but hey…no guts no glory.

With this team, I’d say: if the opponent scores, we need to make sure we score one more ourselves.

But it’s still a while to go, I’m not worried at all.

Nations like Italy and Germany traditionally have good defenders (or England) but they didn’t perform too well with those back fours in the last years… I’d rather have a mediocre back four and a brilliant group of forwards then a world class defense and mediocre attackers.

By Jeroen | September 6th, 2009 at 6:30 am

@Jan

Amen to that. I’d rather play beautiful attacking football then effective defensive football.

Posted from Netherlands

By Rami | September 6th, 2009 at 6:51 am

i dont know, i guess i may not be computing right but i feel we should have a balance of both already..
we dont have class players in defense true, well not today at least.. maybe someday in the future Loovens will turn out to be the new jaap stam, but we’re still a long way from that point.

What i dont want to have however, and what would be very detrimental is having a bunch of no class acts, inexperienced bunch governing our defense.
So far thats what we have.
Vmarwijk should have experimented earlier, should have consolidated the new backline earlier.. He is still jumping back and forth with who to pick.. thats not good, and not good at all for our defense.

Posted from Norway

By Phil | September 6th, 2009 at 6:52 am

Though Hollad has a slow game, probably uninspired too, they still managed to cobble a decent comeback from their dazed state. Japan on the other hand did all they could with their super (motivated) plan, but still managed to be beaten in terms of strength, stamina, play style, creativity, speed, etc. Japan’s main problem is not only the lack of strikers, but their midfielders are overrated by the Japanese media, and worst, they have a horrendous defense. Qatar and Bahrain and Kazahstan an Australia exposed their defense so badly that it is hard to believe Japan is ranked as top in Asia.

Posted from Japan

By finnster01 | September 6th, 2009 at 7:07 am

To me it looked more like Japn ran out of gas. They play a high pressure game which requires having big engine guys especially in midfield.

I actually question their tactics and am rather underwhelmed because if you can’t last 90 minutes playing that style, why try, especially against a supposedly top team like Oranje? And if you know you can’t last, at least change tactics at half time. Not impressed with their coach and his lack of abilities to make midgame adjustments. Very VanBasten like to be honest.

A very unimpressive Dutch side won because Japan doesn’t have 5 Kuyt’s in the midfield.

By Jan | September 6th, 2009 at 7:15 am

Hey lads, a quick question: can’t you read the new Sneijder article I posted?

Everyone keeps commenting on these posts. Normally, when I post a new piece, the arguments skip to the new article?

Just wondering: Sneijder, I’m happy and that will show in my game (or something like that) it’s called…

By finnster01 | September 6th, 2009 at 8:11 am

@Jan: I can read it, no probs.

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