Bert van Marwijk enjoys himself

September 11th, 2008 | by: Jan | Comments Off

This post was ready to go, but I got sick and forgot to post it. So, here it is. Old news, for a bit, but I decided to post it anyway… (how many times can you use “post” in one sentence??)

Van Marwijk doesn’t seem to have a worry in the world in the run up to the first serious match for the WC in 2010.

His selection is fit. “And the vibe is great. The circumstances for me are perfect and I highly enjoy the level of these players,” he said at the very crowded Press conference.

Van Marwijk doesn’t want to be compared with Marco van Basten. But what does catch the eye, is that the new team manager spends more time on the pitch with his players and his sessions take longer as well.

A session under Van Marwijk takes 90 minutes. And last Wednesday, he organized two sessions on one day.

“It’s simple. I don’t have them too often so I want to make the most of it,” the new coach said. “My role here is not to make them better players. What my role is, is to make them function as a team.”

Van Marwijk’s objective is to make the Dutch team more stable. “We are a creative nation. A little bit cheeky and hardheaded and a tad arrogant,” says the former UEFA cup winner.
“That is our strength and our weakness. We tend to be a bit too easy, to taciturn at times. I want to take that out. We need to learn how to win. One of the ways to do that, is by making the team more stable.

Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong need to lead in that process, Van Marwijk thinks. “They are key to making the team play better. The anchors, if you will. They control the balance between offense and defense and they allow the artists to shine.”

“But our creative players also can help us become more stable. Sometimes, an offensive player only needs to take three steps back to close up shop. Is it strange that I need to teach them this, at this level? I won’t go into that, but it certainly is needed.”

The new team manager won’t give anything away in terms of starting line ups, but it seems he’ll start with the same eleven as he used against Russia (1-1).

“I was content with that game. That was a serious match. Now we need to close games down and become more stable in our execution. And we need that against Macedonia. You see, you don’t want to give anything away, because you’ll get yourself in trouble. You don’t win those matches easily. You can compare players on paper and conclude that Oranje is stronger than Macedonia, but it doesn’t work like that on the pitch. Any pro club who concedes a goal for instance against an amateur club will get in trouble nowadays, so we need to be very concentrated against Macedonia and never ever think that the game is in the bag.”