Van Basten missed a huge opportunity to score! - Johan Derksen

Johan Derksen is senior editor of the leading Dutch football magazine VI. He analyses games on tv and is supposedly very close to Johan Cruyff. That relationship however, does not stop him from expressing his opinion on the performance of one Marco van Basten.

According to Van Basten, the WC was a huge learning experience for the young players in the Oranje selection. The hectic events at this WC will form a good base for the EC2008. I really hope this also applies to Van Basten himself.

He is an ex-world class footballer, is an accomplished and experienced golf-player but as coach and people manager he is an amateur. A rookie. That’s ok, we can accept that, because he does have everything to become a great coach, once. He acts the cool, self assured dude, without any doubts but behind that mask lives a human being of flesh and blood. After the Portugal defeat Saint Marco became a normal person, who can lose. Let’s rejoice.

Van Basten profiles himself pretty good. The whole nation eats his words and overlook his prejudices, his mistakes, his wrong judgements and inconsistent acting. The KNVB wants peace and quiet and does not have any reasonable alternative for Van Basten and plunged at the chance to extend his contract.

It’s a bit exaggerated though, to say that we had two good years under Van Basten. The results were ok, but the quality of the football was poor. And when it was important for Oranje to actually win, he made some deer mistakes. Oranje lost the match and still the quality of play was poor.

But, Holland wants to excell. We want to play the best football on the planet. Other countries don’t really care. They just want to win. Former coaches played fingerlickin’ football, but never got any real results. The result of two years van Basten is, that we played purely for the results and still we ended up with nil. Oranje has been sent home to early again. So, count your blessings.

Van Basten made some good calls in the last years, but also made some blunders. The Ajax-clan he has grouped around him will work against him now. Van’t Schip is a logical choice as assistant. They trust each other, both were good players, and Schip has experience, albeit shortly. Menzo as keepers’ trainer is a good choice too. But Rob Witschge? He was just there to complete the quartet for the cardgames. Witschge seems to be a nice chap, but that’s highly irrelevant. Why didn’t Van Basten, as inexperienced coach, choose a more mature assistant, like Neeskens, Ruud Krol or Willem van Hanegem?

He also picked Ajax players without any criticism, where as a proven worldclass midfielder as Van Bommel was scrutinizied in his every move.

Van Bommel was PSV’s star and mingles well in Rijkaard’s dreamteam, but is a doubting and insecure midfielder in Oranje, thanks to Van Basten’s immature approach. It’s pretty remarkable that Van Bommel is still available for Oranje. The midfielder has always been judged on his weaknesses, where as the young Ajax players received much more credit. They were picked for their strong points, although we couldn’t really see those during this WC.

Van Basten is cool, calm and collected but seems to operate as a dictator. Makaay is not interesting for him, Van Bommel is treated as a schoolboy and Van Nistelrooy learned through the media that Van Basten would axe him.

Van Nistelrooy wasn’t passed over, he was sacrificed. Because the system Van Basten had devised simply didn’t work and because Van Basten used overrated players in midfield. Van Basten hasn’t succeeded in moulding a balanced midfield and went down by and with his own footbal religion and his preference for certain players.

Robben and Van Persie are extremely talented strikers. But, they will always go for the individual action. They’re not players who’ll go to the corner flag to cross a ball in the box for Ruud. Or Dirk. Or Jan. Or Klaas-Jan. Van Nistelrooy did not get one decent ball from the wings. Sneijder was Holland’s central midfielder. True, he is gifted, he is perfectly two-legged, but this WC was just a level to high. He couldn’t make his mark on the games once and was basically invisible.

Van der Vaart was another victim of Van Basten’s singlemindedness. He was recently operated upon, has no rhythm and is thrown to the lions. This is irresponsible behaviour and hardly explainable to fit players like Landzaat. And even Cocu had difficulties within this unbalanced midfield. Van Nistelrooy was the victim of all this. No support from the wings and no support from midfield. It was no surprise to me that Kuyt too, could not impress.

Only one player could’ve saved Oranje: Robin van Persie. He is the revelation of this WC – for Oranje – and outclassed the rest of the team. Van Basten used him as winger, but as shadow striker behind the target man he is lethal. Kuyt should have played on the right wing with Van Persie on midfield in the offensive role. Van Basten and his team thought however, that the unfit van der Vaart, the overrated Sneijder and the limited Heijtinga would bring the ultimate success for Oranje. That was a huge mistake.

I don’t think Van Basten should go. A coach needs to learn how to lose as well. But I do hope he learned from his mistakes and that he realises that leaving Davids out of this squad was a huge mistake. Van Basten was once a feared goalscorer. This time, he missed before an empty goal. This WC can be labelled as mediocre. Oranje had chances to go far. If the team manager had made the right decisions and hadn’t gone down with his own prejudices. We went down in Germany, with bad bad football. And that was not van Basten’s objective when he took the job on…

Johan Derksen