Agitation in Camp Orange increases…

With one day to go for Oranje, Marco van Basten proved to be agitated… Is it because the Italians are so cocky on their Euro2008 blog? Is it because players get injured quicker than you can say “Cannavaro”? Is it because his hairdo is mocked? No, it’s because the press can’t seem to live with the “secret training sessions.”

When the press can’t get to the facts, they’ll make them up.

The first Hearst-like fable was Sneijder’s horrible injury. He didn’t get injured, he just left the training because he got a hit on the ankle and didn’t want to risk anything. End of story.

Than news came out that Van Persie torpedoed Wesley Sneijder on the training, with the aim of getting a rival out of the way. It was big news in De Telegraaf: Van Persie kicks Sneijder in half.

Van Persie couldn’t believe it! “As if I would hurt a team mate, an important team mate, two days before a match!!! Unbelievable. I don’t even want to talk about that stuff with you. What do you think I am?” But…what’s that saying…when there’s smoke, there is a fire.
Robin: “He took me on, passed me and I sort of gave him a little push to try to get him out of balance and he fell against Afellay and it looked very spectacular but it was nothing. I won’t say a word more on this!”

Sneijder later revealed “it was nothing”. Marco van Basten was extremely annoyed with the press’ intensions to create a lot of humbug over nothing. “We are busy selling news papers again, aren’t we?” he said grumpy at the press conference.

Joris Mathijsen was grilled by the press about his recent form. About his mistakes against Austria and about playing Luca Toni. The former AZ center half didn’t want to let his guard down and dutifully answered all the questions politely, before he left the press-room.

Van Persie ended his interview with: “I feel we can become heroes at this tournament. We know what we can, but most people don’t take Oranje too serious. Great. We’ll be the underdog. But I think we will go a long way this time around.”