EC semifinals… If only…

the reason we lost ‘ our way’ is in my humble opinion the Boula story

think it would have been better if Boula and his wife would have left and not stayed with the group… we looked mentally drained…

i dont do if’s…

lets just all hope the germans will get slaughtered…Spain would be a well deserved winner!!

Posted from  Netherlands

Boulah’s incident definitely didn’t help. But I still think the biggest reason is because we fought a team that was decent enough to follow the tactics of only 1 of the 2 coaches in this EC that could break us tactically, Guus (and the other one being our own coach).

The other teams might have caught up eventually, but it’s difficult, in such a short time, to figure out and do something against the weaknesses of a time in such a short time, unless you’ve coached them once and know everything about them.

But I do agree that it may have been better for Boulah to sat that one out. And not wore those stupid black ribbons that reminded them of Boulah’s incident every time they looked at each other. Just because they may have bonded a bit closer since that tragedy doesn’t mean they’re suddenly going to play better football. It’s a “my baby girl just died” tragedy we’re talking about, not a happy feelgood moment where players learn more about how each other likes to play football or some sh-t.

‘Guys, everyone talks about the “great tactics of Master Guus” but no one explains what that tactics entailed… So, what did Guus tell his players to do?’

One of the first noticeable differences was how he didn’t bother defending Boulah and let him walk all the way out there since Guus knew he sucked at building up. And how he put their best striker against Ooijer/Mathijsen while Boulah should have been playing central defence as he’s the best defender on our side. Bronkhorst didn’t manage to do sh-t the entire game because, unlike boulah, he was marked with 2 guys so he couldn’t build up. They also tightened their middle and the mount areas and didn’t bother with the flanks. Something that we didn’t make use of very much. All our plays went through the middle, which is exactly where all the russian midfielders/defenders were.

‘And why wasn’t he able to do so against Spain?’

That’s very simple, Spain doesn’t play like us at all. And Guus is a former Dutch (national) team coach, not a former Spain (national) team coach. He doesn’t know how to exploit their weaknesses and gain a tactical advantage like he did with us. Spain, on the other hand, learned a thing or two after seeing Russia beat our ass and Sweden’s ass and knew how to make their main 2 strikers useless. And then technical skill and experience comes to play. And then Russia is simply outmatched.

agree with Jan on Hiddink….dont think he ever was a great tactician
hes just the best people-manager is human history

btw; Jan , check uitzendinggemist; yesterday evening there was a great docu on Hiddink on Nederland 2, you should take a look

Posted from  Netherlands

‘Most coaches leave the worst build up player free to do the build up. Is by no means a master stroke.’

No, but pinpointing exactly who that is, while using the other guy to double mark the other defender IS something not all coaches can do. For everybody else, that would be a risk, for Hiddink, that’s something he did based on what he already knew before this EC even happened.

‘And that’s not because Guus “decided” that, but because Marco wants it that way. That’s why they are there in the first place.’

And that’s exactly why Guus got it right by letting it done that way and why marco was tactically outplayed.

‘We didn’t play over the left flank too much, but that’s because we played our field too long and because Sneijder is not a channel operator like Robben, Babel or Van Persie (all sorely missed).’

And you think it’s a coincidence that all the Russians decided to not defend the flanks and go all middle instead?

‘Marco played 4-3-3 for a long time and only changed to 4-2-3-1 six months before the EC.’

It doesn’t matter if you change tactics for 6 months. Players weaknesses don’t go away that easily. And something tells me hiddink has always watched the dutch national team closely. He was a former coach after all, why wouldn’t he want to see what was done to them compared to what he did with them to see how much better/worse off they are?

‘We conceded the first goal and had to chase the game with a team that was “out of it”, resulting in our players doing selfish things (Van Persie, Sneijder, Vaart, Afellay).’

We were sucking long before that first goal. That had little to do with it. Russia dominated the first half as well.

‘I love the man dearly and respect his cv and all, but if he was the hero against Holland he must have been the loser against Spain. I don’t buy it.’

Ehm he is the loser against spain. He just lost to the same team twice in the same EC with the same goal margin. That’s no hero to me. It just proves he was only tactically ready for teams like Holland and weaker teams like Sweden and Greece.

To think that most of the players started sucking because of Boulah’s tragedy is naive. It’s not the first time they play football under unfavorable mental pressure.

Jan,

I couldn’t agree more with you. After the group games, everybody just couldn’t stop about how great the Oranje was. The Germans (Netzer) was saying Van Basten was a genius. The BBC had him as the top coach for pure “effervescence”. Than Oranje looses (and sucks) against Russia. It is one tough day, and suddenly everybody goes, the Oranje are not as good as they looked and Van Basten really is a lousy coach. Suddenly Russia has a lesson or two to teach the world about football. I was sure (and if I betted I would have made money) that they would loose and suck against Spain. And they did. What now? Guus is an incompetent? And what about all that Arshavin hype?? Where was he last night?? Hate to say it, but you have to be a bit German (in consistency of reaching results) before being professed “the greatest player of the tournament” or the “biggest discovery of it all”.

Too bad it did not work for the Oranje this time around. We just had one bad day, one bad game. Unfortunately the wrong one. No one can take away though the beauty of the first two matches. Makes every Oranje proud to be so.

Posted from  Albania

Jan

Do you realize that practically everything you’ve said the last couple of posts, except for the bit about Boulah’s tragedy, goes back to whichever team has the best tactic?

You agree with JC and I agree with JC and JC said Holland’s tactic wasn’t good (against Russia).

‘Still, Marco chose this system and against France, Italy and Romania it worked well because the whole team did what it needed to do.’

France was a close game, our tactic didn’t work well on them at all. They were pushing us almost harder than we were pushing them. That we managed to score despite being pushed as hard was because our strikers had a better day. They dominated first half, and we evened out second half because of robben/van persie. While we won convincingly, Italy did underestimate us and we got extremely lucky on the first and third goal. Romania just sucked. We barely even used our signature tactics there because we didn’t even have our key players on the field.

‘Coincidence?’

It’s not a coincidence. As I said, against Russia was the first game where boulah was not marked, and bronkhorst instead had 2 guys. Also, none of the flanks were defended well, and everything was choked up in the middle. That happened in none of the previous 3 games, only Russia did that. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Coincidentally, it looked a lot like the first half against France where we were taking a beating as well. So your claim that the players played much better before is bull. This is a team sport and it’s ALL about tactics and teams decent enough to carry out those tactics. We were decent enough to carry out a tactic, and Russia was decent enough to carry out a tactic that was better than ours. That’s the main reason we lost.

‘A stupid game. A game! Nothing compared to losing a child!’

The two are completely unrelated so comparing them is silly.

Or rather, Russia was decent enough to carry out a tactic that was specifically designed to beat our tactic.

GD,

do you have a child? If yes, would you go to work for a week if he/she died? Do you think your family, friends and colleagues would not be impacted, think about you, feel awkward helpless and sorry? Don’t you think your performance at work would suffer too?

I think I know the answers to that if my daughter ever passed away (God forbid).

Football is indeed a game, and that is all it is. Losing a child is not.

Posted from  United States

Boula’s issue is not an excuse for the team to play badly in the Russia game. They are professional, they represent the country, please don’t blame the others if themselves weren’t perfromancing well

Posted from  United Kingdom

finnster01

That is a good point. So here’s my question: WHY did they even step a FOOT on that field if they really felt that way? Why bother playing that game AT ALL? If they don’t care about anything anymore after she has died? Boulah himself said he would play. I doubt any of the others objected to playing that day. So clearly, they too felt that the game was important enough to be played DESPITE what happened to the baby. And that’s my point, they can’t be compared, it’s not one and another. The baby died, it has already happened and nothing you can do about. If you really feel “okay she died, and now I don’t care about the game at all” then DON’T FUCKING PLAY. DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE STEP ON THAT FIELD WITH THAT MENTALITY. And I find it very naive and if not very offensive to assume that that was their mentality. They cared about the game, despite what happened to Boulah, they cared about the game a lot. To say otherwise is an insult to their dedication to the sport and their status as professionals.

And again, if you compare their play vs russia and their play vs france, the only difference is the amount of goals scored. Our midfield and our defence sucked about as hard vs france as vs russia. The only difference is that Hiddink knew how to shut down our attacks and we had the tactical offensive advantage vs france because of robben and van persie.

I don’t care if you are representing the United Federation of Planets, losing a child will impact you and your extended family and friends.

This has nothing to do with professionalism. I am a CEO of a business. If someone lost a child in my company, I would send them home immediately and put them on leave. I don’t care how much they would beg to stay. Everyone needs time on their own to deal with these issues. If anything, I blame MVB for not doing the same. Boula is a hero, but he was indeed a distraction and he should have been sent home. MVB’s people skills again.

Posted from  United States

What you call people’s skills is simply called management or tactics in this context. And this is not about whether it has or hasn’t impacted them, because it clearly has, but whether it’s the biggest reason for their loss.

overall I agree with Jan, but it true that (as both GD and Jan pointed out despite the apparent disagreement) in the match vs russia, oranje used the wrong tactics. The question is whether that was van Basten’s fault because he told them to use the long ball down the middle and not pressure their opponents until they were in the dutch half or if the players didn’t execute the game plan that was set out for them by marco, presumably similar to the strategy employed in the group stage games. Either way, as Jan pointed out the field was stretched too long leaving space between the defense and the mids that the russian (esp arshavin) could exploit. and honestly i don’t recall the french being able to run with the ball virtually unchallenged in between the mid and defensive lines and into the box like the russians did, so i have to disagree with GD on this point. finally no matter how professional and focused you are, a tragedy is still a tragedy and even if you lose only 10% of your focus/motivation, in professional sports that is enough to make the difference. finally, ofcourse scoring first is a huge advantage (unless you’re turkish ofcourse, in which case it is best to be trailing, then score two goals at right at the end not giving the opponent a chance to fight back).

What the spanish did and what we should have done was to (1) take control of the game, instead of givin up the initiative and hope to counter and (2) play using the space out wide on the wings but keep the team compact in the length (use the full backs on the overlap, move the ball up with short passes and do not always pass the ball to your lone striker if he is covered by at least two defender…logically, someone else should be wide open if thats the case, i mean come on, if they are double teaming ruud van gol and gio don’t you think that someone other boulah is also left unmarked?)

other than that i just want to point out that the spanish played with the same system as the dutch for the majority of the match due to villa going off injured (in the ~30 minute?) and they brought on cesc. senna and either xavi or alonso were in holding roles while cesc was the free man but often changing position with silva and iniesta. so we can’t blame the 4-2-3-1 for our loss maybe only the way we decided to play in that formation. lastly, i would imagine that if Guus had targeted someone to mark tightly to prevent the buildup from the back it would have been Ramos, yet he still managed to get involved in the attack a lot. now i know ramos is a little more dynamic than gio and is younger but still, i don’t buy that the reason we lost is because Guus had a stroke of genius and decided to close gio down. Plus, even when our fullbacks were overlaping the mids were too busy trying to take on the entire russian defense to notice and give them the ball (esp affelay and van persie). Oranje has more than enough skill to work their way through tightly organized team like the russian if they play to their strengths but unfortunately we forgot to do just that and instead pretended we were English.

Posted from  Canada

Great post Igor, I think you nailed the nail right on the head for me. And I like the shot at the English at the end too

Posted from  Canada

i reckon tactics are much overrated anyway, sure you give a team some basics but its the players that make the match and not the tactics… you can have a monkey as team manager of the brasilian team and he will beat any pub team with Guus Hiddink as manager

im pretty sure that we would have beaten Russia if the players had the form they had in the Italy game; regardless of tactics or even apponents,
i dont think Gio could have been stopped by the russians if he had his Italia form (and yes i know he had lots of space in that game)

i reckon we played the long balls not cause pretended to be english but cause on the day we didnt have the quality/ form to play any other way

and the most likely reason for the total loss of form has to be the Boula story; any parent on this blog will tell you its impact has to be unimaginable; i reckon Boula and his wife should have left the group to grieve as a family

Posted from  Netherlands

“you can have a monkey as team manager of the brasilian team and he will beat any pub team with Guus Hiddink as manager”

Hahahahaha…

Igor, I couldn’t have said it better. I was reading GD’s post and it struck me that maybe our difference of opinion has to do with the way we define stuff.
To me, tactics is the gameplan a coach designs for his team for a given match. If the team fails to execute this, to me, the tactics didn’t fail, but the players failed to execute the tactics.

I don’t think Boulah’s tragedy is an excuse and I also don’t think there is something wrong with someone’s mentality when he can’t play 100% due to certain external circumstances.

Maybe GD has never played sports at a high level, or any other performance for that matter. If you play top level (sports, ballet, music, circus arts, whatever) and you can’t get to 100%, let’s say you can only reach 95%, than you’re in throuble. It’s that easy.

We’re talking mental stuff here, sure, but mentality is not the same thing.

A lot of great players for instance, are superstitious. When JC once couldn’t find his gum before a match (which he would spit out while walking on the pitch in order to kick it on the opponents’ half!), he wouldn’t feel secure. That would stick during the match. The man said so himself.

If you’re an athlete and you’ve been working towards a certain sports-event for two years, you can’t even contemplate throwing the towel before a game because something dreadful happened. How would we have felt - and commetned here - if the Dutch team would have retracted from the EC? Boulah and wife would have felt guilty for the rest of their lives and all the football fans in the world would have punished us for it. That was never an option.

You go out there and try to do your best.

Oh, about the comparing losing a child and playing sports being not comparable… It’s about the effect something has on the capability of a sportsman to deliver. Football is played with the brain. More than anything else. Do you think Fabregas is the fastest player? He isn’t. Is he the strongest? No. Does he have the hardest shot? I don’t think so. Is he the most fit? No… For all I know, maybe his technical skills aren’t even the best of all players. It’s his brain! The ability to see solutions quicker than others and the ability to let his feet execute what his brains wants them to do. So, my friend, anything that happens in life that would effect the way a player feels is relevant. What he eats. The health of his dog, the underpants he wears, the weather, etc. Some things can be controlled by the manager. Other things can’t be.

I am going to stop this discussion for now, unless GD comes back with interesting new viewpoints.

‘To me, tactics is the gameplan a coach designs for his team for a given match. If the team fails to execute this, to me, the tactics didn’t fail, but the players failed to execute the tactics.’

They failed to execute their tactics because Russia had a better one against ours. That IS a failure in tactics. You need to take in account of that fact: we’re not the only ones with tactics. And clearly, our tactics didn’t hold up against what Guus hiddink prepared for us.

‘I don’t think Boulah’s tragedy is an excuse and I also don’t think there is something wrong with someone’s mentality when he can’t play 100% due to certain external circumstances.’

No, there’s nothing wrong with that and that’s not the point of this discussion.

‘Maybe GD has never played sports at a high level, or any other performance for that matter. If you play top level (sports, ballet, music, circus arts, whatever) and you can’t get to 100%, let’s say you can only reach 95%, than you’re in throuble. It’s that easy.’

It’s even easier to say it. You think achieving 100% happens often? When you’re dealing with a team play of 11 players, few things are ever 100%. You think Robben/Van Persie felt 100% comfortable against Italy? They just came out of a recovery period, and I’m pretty sure Van Persie literally said he wasn’t 100% before/at the game. You thought Boulah was 100% comfortable vs Italy? After not having played so long? You think the other players felt 100% with their own state and their tactics before fighting Italy? With recently recovered teammates and teammates who haven’t played in a long time among their midst? With new guy Engelaar? You think ANY of them felt 100%? They NEVER are 100%. Before and during, 100% is not possible, maybe for a few moments, or when they’re way ahead. But 100% at the start of a game? That’s never going to happen. There’s always something.

‘You go out there and try to do your best.’

Exactly, and that is what they did, mostly. They weren’t doing some silly comparison like “what is this game compared to losing a kid?”. They were like “we lost something dear to us, but life goes on, and now this game is important”.

Yes, for my statement, that is the MAIN reason.

As for your statement, I didn’t read where you said ‘Guus’ team knew how to take advantage of it’. Because that sounds an awful lot like tactics. You said the main reason they lost was due to mental/psychological factors.