B-teams and mourning armbands don’t belong at an EC.

Sneijder himself should answer the question: why the fear, as he is one of the team’s leaders and he was nearly invisible in the first half of the russia match. The team was tentative–that was clear even watching the match on TV. The confidence evident in the group play suddenly went missing. Why? It’s impossible to say. It’s is ultimately the coach’s job to get his team mentally ready to play a match, and in that sense Van Basten failed miserably in this game, tho he’s to be credited for creating excellent team spirt through the first stage of the tourney. The Boulah tragedy did not help–and perhaps he should have been sent home. I don’t think playing the 2s against Romania should have had a negative effect-why? Spain played its second team against Greece, I believe, and there was no impact on the Italy performance at all.

Posted from  United States

I remain of the opinion that the B-team and black armband issues were not the reason the Netherlands were defeated by Russia. Resting the starters made sense–avoid injury, avoid yellow/red cards and give the players some recuperation time. The Boulah sadness was real and important, especially due to the family atmosphere that had been created by this team during the tournament. The black arm bands were an act of respect, sympathy and entirely appropriate.

The Netherlands lost this match for five reasons: they were not ready mentally to play at peak performance; the defense is weak and was exploited; the players were not tough enough to sustain the Russian intimidation physically; Hiddink completely outcoached van Basten in every way and van Basten proved he is not yet anywhere near being a high quality, competent coach/manager. Yes, the players lost the match, not van Basten, s he did not play. However, as their coach, he made poor substitutions, made no tactical changes in the second half and had that old, familiar “deer in the headlights” look during the entire match. If Hiddink had been coaching the Netherlands team, I believe the outcome would have been different. Hiddink is active on the touchline, encouraging his players, cajoling the officials when he thinks they screw up, constantly evaluating tactics and making changes as necessary. van Basten–he just sits and thinks and looks.At the highest level of this sport of professional football, that style will not work.

Until the Netherlands develops top quality players at all positions, who are tactically and technically skilled, and possessed of an aggressive (in the positive sense,not nasty sense, of the term)attitude toward winning, they will never win a major international tournament. They will also need to be coached by a bright and gifted teacher, who can analyze a match, make tactical changes as needed and be the greatest advocate for the team’s success. The Dutch have seen that model in place–the U-21 teams of ‘06 and ‘07, winning two European championships with great players with the qualities mentioned and, in my opinion, the best coach in the Netherlands–Foppe de Haan.

Posted from  United States

@Bob,

you point out many very good points as always. In particular the outcoaching part. MVB could not make any adjustments and taking out kuyt at half time was a terrible mistake. Kuyt may not have had his best of days at work in the office, but why not just tell him to shadow Arshavin at all times? He is the only one with a motor capable of doing just that, and who knows, if Arshavin had disappeared, I think the score would have been very different.

I agree completely, I like what Foppe is doing. Now let us get him to develop some decent CB’s because that is the achilles heel of Oranje.

Still annoyed, angry, and surprised that the Oranje midfield decided to go on vacation against Russia. I did not expect that from someone wearing the lion.

Posted from  United States

@ Finnster01
Kuijt and boulah was keeping arshavin quiet, however marco decided to bring robin and heitinga.
the dutch do have good CB like greene marcellis, lucius, and hofland but marco decided to go with ooijer and mathijsen.

Posted from  United States

Indeed, this has nothing to do with B-teams and such. The reason why we lost is simple IMO.

1. We showed our best tactics in the first 2 games against 2 known strong teams. This sent a warning signal to every coach that the Dutch have a winning strat and they need to think of something to fight it. Bad case scenario: the coaches of the other teams are capable enough to think of a strategy to stop us from doing that tactic and getting us out of our rhythm. Worst case scenario: that coach being Guus Hiddink, who not only knows our tactics, but knows most of our players inside out before we even started this EC.

2. Pressure to do well. In just 2 games, we transformed from the team that “will get its ass kicked by italy and then france and leave the cup without being able to putt up a fight” to the team that “is so skilled that it will kick every other teams asses and look good doing it”. That brings both arrogance and pressure, lots of it. The first sign of us having trouble while being topdog will cause distress in the team. Going into the game with that mentality, and being overrun by Russians right at the first half of the game, due to tactical disadvantage, is one of those signs of trouble.

So add “rather huge tactical disadvantage” + “not relaxed to play the game as your body likes it to” = huge physical and mental drain on the players = guaranteed crappy play.

Ironically, what we did to Italy and France is what Russia did to us: the underdog that was tactically well prepared to face those teams and with no pressure vs teams that never thought we would be good enough to put up a decent fight and got shocked after seeing us put up more of a fight and tactically outdo them.

Yeh, I bet that influenced their mental state as well. Which caused them to mentally destabilize even faster after their tactics had been shut down. Rather than focus, they simply panicked and everything came crashing down, hard. Analysts kept saying Sneijder was the only one taking the initiative with the long shots. But to me, they felt more like an act of desperation. They were harshly beaten out of their rhythm and their tactics were seen through by the enemy. One moment they were the soccer gods, and the other moment they were getting outplayed. That’s a good reason to fall into despair.

We were unlucky. If we faced any other team, like spain or germany, we would likely have put up a way better fight because we wouldn’t underestimate them mentally and tactically. We would be better prepared because we would expect difficulties. And if we did make it through and go against Russia in a later round, we would have realized that Russia was the real deal and we would have prepared better, both mentally and tactically.

Then again, Guus Hiddink is still Guus Hiddink. Marco sat there and made some bad calls after realizing that we were (tactically) in trouble. Which is proof that for that game, even he became so shocked that he was in a confused state as to what to do. Or maybe there really was nothing to do in that short amount of time to beat Hiddink’s tactic. Guus Hiddink knew about our faults a long time ago, he prepared (the russians) for this for an extensive period of time, I’m sure of it. Soccer isn’t that easy that just changing tactics would win games. The players need to be comfortable with those tactics to play them as well, or you’ll simply make things worse. This time, we got outfoxed, big time.

I dont see why VDS can play on til the WC. Im sure the new coach will let him sit out and few more qualifiers. IF he really wants it he will come back to the orange. A national title is all that eludes him.

Posted from  Canada

I believe its a combination of a few things which were already mentioned by many of you.
My true believe is that we play great and brilliantly when we are not expected to win or do well, but at times become complacent and confused when facing lesser teams who put up a good fight or a brick wall in front of goal.(Luxemburg)

Jan the Olympics are at least in our time zone and yes we will have the Oranje and the Oz teams to follow

Posted from  Singapore

Arshavin rip the dutch back line apart. the dutch needed robben to push back the russian fullbacks but he was injured. the dutch fullbacks did not put pressure on the russian backline. every time the russian had the ball you knew something was going to happen, every time the dutch had the ball they gave it back to the russians. marco should of switch back to 4-3-3 after 65 min. de jong, engelaar, and sneijder would of been in midfield, with ruud, huntelaar, and robin in attack.

Posted from  United States

IMO vdSar still can have 2 more years on his legs, Shilton and Papa Dino still performed at high level past 40. As much as I love RvN and Gio, I think it’s time to move on.

It’s amazing despite how many reasonable and great points posted here about “why we lost”, lots of them I agree with, I still can’t believe and can’t accept the fact that we actually lost. To Russia too ….. pls. don’t misinterpret this as my insulting Russia or being arrogant, but if your team spanked Italy and France convincingly, you expect to go to the Finals. That, to me is not arrogance (as some supporters of other countries pointed), it’s common sense. Unfortunately, the ball is round and logic doesn’t always apply here.

Bottom line, if I have to pick just one “reason” or “excuse”, I’ll have to go with “mental”. While MvB might have made some tactical mistakes, our so-called B team or subs are probably still more technically sound than most of Russian, Turkish, or German players. Just the “fighting spirit” was not there. Hiddink, Terim or Low may be better tacticians than MvB, but I don’t think it was tactic that made Turkey beat the Czechs or Croatia …. the same that it was not tactic that made Germany rebounded after being beaten by Croatia in the group round. Just when everybody thought they’d be spanked by Portugal, they played a nice game with fighting spirit, German style. Turkey was down 0-2 with whatever mins they had and 0-1 with only one min left, they still “fight”, you know? We were 1-1 after extention and suddenly nobody is running? Didn’t Sneijder say something like “we are tired of playing in leagues” compared to the Russians? Well, if you’re being paid $20 or so million, you better run like Forrest Gump.

I always believe that the Oranje always has the best players, in technical skills, we’ll never run out of technically-gifted players. I think the Germans can only dream about having a Robben, an Overmars, a Bergkamp or a van Persie in their team; but for some reasons, our players - except for some few - just don’t look like “they are willing to fight for it” (I meant, look at Rijkaard spitted at Voeller, I’m not condoning that but that was fighting spirit!).

I hope van Warwijk and his team will be able to address this aspect going forward. At the end of the day, it is still a team sport, nobody should be “the superstar” and feels that they are “higher than the team”. Spain is probably another team most similar to the Oranje, in which they’d choke at the higher stage, but looks like Aragones is a bad @$$ who left Prince Raul out and managed to get his star players running for the ball. Villa also looked like he has a great relationship with Torres by approaching him after scoring, while we’re reading/speculating that van Persie and Sneijder were bickering for free kick? WTF with that?

I also read an article that mentions that Dutch people are “the most content people in the world”, which is all good and dandy but I am also speculating that this probably contributed to the fact that Jong Oranje just don’t need to fight for things and take things easier than their German or Turkish counterparts? I’m speaking in relative term, of course. Can this also be a factor?

–H

@Jan,

Belatedly, also echoing what others have posted about how great this site and your posts are. Appreciate that from the “land where football is being played without the players’ feet” here.

I do have one small request, if possible ….. can you also include the URL of the articles you cited? I understand that we may not be able to put full URL on this site, but you can leave out the http://www ….. I just think that it’s helpful if we read the whole article to get the whole context.

So I said goodbye to most of you yesterday after our loss but just realizing that it’s not easy to just leave and come back in 2 years. I hope most of you will still post here updating us who are not in Holland about the progress of our beloved team.

Also, as I’m posting this, I also saw that the “Netherlands” blog has the most posts, almost 300 more than “Italy” and 5x more than “Germany”. At the very least, we should win “the most posts award” of the country blogs. What you guys think?

–H

Hup Holland!, champions of the blogs hehehe.

@HedonistiX:

“We were 1-1 after extention and suddenly nobody is running? ”
I totally agree with you. ORANJE struggled to get back in the game. When RVN scored the equalizer just before normal play ended, I thought the team would muster back the confidence and drive, go get the win in extra time. Nobody was running, moving into position. The Russians were still all over the place and sliced the defense like butter. I remembered nodding my head at the edge of my sit, saying ‘Oh shit, it won’t be long before they breached again’.

Think the team was hoping to hold out to penalty kicks. Even that, didn’t see any tactical change to hold out in defense. Everyone was cemented at midfield out of air. The mental fitness wasn’t there. Watched the other Qtr finals, those teams were mentally prepared to play up to PKs.
May be wrong but perhaps the team were confident they would demolished the Russians in normal time and didn’t expect to be stretched into extras. Just didn’t see anyone screaming ‘cover here, get him, fall back,!@#$%$%’ in defense except VDS. The play was basically reduced to ORANJE’s 18 yard box. My heart went out to VDS, he was totally ‘naked’.

But seriously, kudos to the Russian. They were even more aggressive in extra time. They were all out to slaughter, like they were on steroids! Was like a boxing match, the opponent kept on punching with combination but the arms and guard was down, hoping to be rescued by the gong.

Posted from  Singapore

Re armbands: Arshavin said yesterady, in an interview to a Russian newspaper, that he wished our team wear black armbands too for Boola, but wasn’t sure it was approapriate.
Re the game: i’m 34 and don’t remember Russian team ever playing better since 1986-1988 Lobanovsky times. It was USSR, and 80% of team from Ukraine back than, so even more so. So you guys were also unlucky to stumble across the unique occasion of Russians playing best game in 20 years.
Generally, our football team plays well only when everybody gives up any hope. Unfortunately, now hopes are very high so i’m afraid we lose to Spain big time
Nevertheless, i’m flying to Vienna tomorrow ..
Good luck to your team, sure they will be formidable in 2010! Hope our guys will manage to get there as well.

Posted from  Russian Federation

in netherlands, the most capable player is robin van persie. he is a great winger and always puts his best performance. he scored two great in Euro 2008 . he always encourages his team members. i just want to say that we love you persie, keep up your great performance!

Posted from  Pakistan

Salman risha - Van Persie isn’t really a winger. He’s a striker that plays behind the main striker and links up the midfield and forwards. He can play as a winger, but it’s not his best position.

Posted from  Canada