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Rafael in 2004: Zlatan is a psycho!!
Comments(110)
Holland played 21 games against Sweden and some of them were remarkable. About two brothers’ debut, a historical penalty series and a rift between team mates
April 27, 1983, Holland-Sweden 0-3 ( Utrecht)
For the first time, new Galgenwaard is the venue for an international but the 12.000 fans see an Oranje Light. Big name players Van de Korput, Jan Peters, Ruud Krol and John Metgod won’t make the trip for this friendly and three debutants are picked: Wim Hofkens of Anderlecht and brothers Ronald and Erwin Koeman. Dan Corneliusson scores twice and nutmegs Koeman with one. Robert Prytz scores the third. Ben Wijnstekers of Feyenoord is the only players with more than 10 international games to his name.
June 26, 2004: Holland – Sweden 0-0 ( Holland wins after penalties), Faro
The quarter finals at the EC Portugal wasn’t a great game but it sure was an exciting one. Ljungberg hits the post, Henke Larsson the bar and Arjen Robben also hits the framework. It turns into penalties and the Dutch fans get spontaneous diarrhoea. This time it starts well with Zlatan missing his but it would take until the twelth penalty for Sar to stop Mellberg’s penalty and Robben scoring his. The nation was saved from a trauma.
August 18, 2004: Sweden – Holland 2-2 ( Stockholm)
Marco van Basten makes his debut for Holland as the coach but it’s the evening of Zlatan. He stampedes over the pitch as a will boar and his Giovanni van Bronckhorst with an elbow and injures Van der Vaart with a knock on his ankle. The Ajax playmaker can’t continue. After the game, Rafael is livid and calls Zlatan a psycho. The Swede never checked how his team mate was doing. Zlatan is angry with that comments and declares never to play with Van der Vaart again. Two weeks later, Zlatan moves to Juventus.
In a pre-match interview Zlatan now says he didn’t think Oranje played dirty at the World Cup. “Nonsense! They didn’t. They may have had some fouls that were remarkable but I think every team has those. They made it to the finals and deserve respect.”
He wasn’t too understanding about De Jong’s absence, but he doesn’t get the decision. “It’s silly to ban a player for a legitimate tackle in his club competition. Where does it stop then? In England, these tackles are normal. I don’t think it was a horrible cynical foul. I think a coach need to play his best players. Period.”
Van Marwijk said in a press conference that attractive football is high on the agenda still. “We always have that with Oranje, but it sometimes doesn’t work. At the World Cup, we won games and got into this flow and kept on winning. We didn’t mind that we didn’t play highly sensational football. At a World Cup, different aspects count. But now, we will return to our fundamentals. Don’t forget our preparation to the World Cup was disrupted with Robben’s injury and Robin van Persie was returning to form, so maybe we did what we could. Enough to reach the finals, not enough to dazzle.”
And finally, back to the typical Dutch topic of money! The players want to change the payment scheme. In the current scheme, the players only get paid if they qualify for the tournament. The players say it’s not market-conduct and want to be paid by point. There’s a big stand off between the KNVB and the players’ committee. Ha!
Displaying the most recent 25 comments from a total of 110 comments.
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I think we knew this all along that if we were going to play beautiful football it required taking out MvB or NdJ. I mean how many times on this blog have we said that either Wes or VdV should play there, so it shouldn’t come at a surprise to us that were playing very well at the moment.
Posted from 
United States
thx Adrian,but i seriously think sweden will be the second – anyway i support oranje against hungary 
Posted from 
Hungary
How nice the germans said we played : ´Traumfusbal ´…and the English comment said we played gorgeous… everybody… I think we are back .
The 4th goal reminds me of Euro 2008 against Italy and France and Lens was put clean thru in the same way to make it 5-0 but he missed a one on one.
Great game but Satan Ibra again (watch it in slo-mo, he kicks Heitinga in the back, hope the KNVB reports this, he’ll be out for 3 games)
Posted from 
Singapore
I’m happy, it was football from another planet. World now should put netherlands as a benchmark of dominant attacking football, definitely not Spain, who lacks attacking drive at the front.
With injured kuyt, robben, elia, and outform lens, I think we should try other players (not babel) even from U21 or u19, cause I think lens are not much better than let say wijnaldum or biseswar. However we’re not going to have more games this year, in march’11 robben & persie will play wings, affelay and elia will be available to as wings. I think our best players like hunter, robben, persie, sneijder, vaart, bommel and affelay should always start, plus 1 attacking RB & 2 pure defenders (heitinga-mathisen/pieters), so 3-2-4-1 or 4-1-4-1 formation.
Posted from 
Australia
Guys, first goal was between sneijder-vaart-hunter, it’s amazing goal. Core players sneijder-vaart-hunter-persie-robben-bommel-dejong-mathisen-heitinga have been playing together since 2004 so they’ve developed good chemistry. They can only get better and play more football like we used to.
I think Pieters have the right mentalility to step up to national level (unlike brafheid-anita), he has confidence and calmness, just need bit of experience. Next year LB will be between bouma & pieters and hopefully aanholt.
Posted from Australia
Bert won’t change his 4-2-3-1 formation. So I’m hoping van bommel will move back to central defense and have vdv and afellay as holding midfielders, sneijder as the brain, robben on the right, van persie on the left and huntelaar as the center striker… What do you guys think?? Too risky? I would just love to see one game with this line up!!
Van der wiel ~ Heitinga ~ Van Bommel ~ Drenthe?? 
VDV ~ Afellay
Robben ~ Sneijder ~ Van Persie
Huntelaar
Posted from United States
Alex,
I know he won’t change the formation…:(
I can only wish to see 4-1-4-1
off course the lineup will be entertaining and also are risky, especialy with drenthe as LB…anyday I play aanholt instead of drenthe.
with bommel in defence line, I prefer bouma in that formation because he can play like a left side CB or LB.
Van der wiel – Heitinga – Van Bommel – Bouma/ Aanholt
VDV – Afellay
Robben – Sneijder – Van Persie
Huntelaar
Posted from Australia
Jake, you’re right about the LB position, just thinking about that attacking line up makes me drool!! I know it will be risky but maybe not so much since vdv and afellay have experience in that position. With so much talent on the pitch, I can picture the team tearing up any opponents midfield and defense apart
Posted from United States
Love both Line ups guys and we should try it. I was amazed at VdV defensive qualities – I watched him a lot and everytime he went forward and we lost the ball he would hurry back – great to see and the amount of times he robbed Ibra and make him look second class was great !!
Posted from Singapore
Wonderful game and even a lot of people I know were surprised by the scoreline, I for one was expecting 2/3 to nil and my expectations of how gorgeous, beautiful (all the positive adjectives) were well beyond met. After watching us score the first goal I was very happy and at the same time thought, oh shit, we scored within 3 minutes, we better not get complacent and sit on our asses; quite the opposite! More than excellent teamwork, absolutely stunning goals (I thought Wes hit that within 30 seconds and I thought this is the Oranje we’ve been waiting for, unfortunately it was just a pubic hair off but we started strong and I agree the last 15-20 mins we just said fack it and laid back.
Very unfortunate for Dirk, but since he walked off by himself (really unfortunate he left in an ambulance), it’s 50/50 how bad he injured himself and I agree Lens was not too convincing, but if he woulda been a foot behind the line he would have made up for several of his blunders, but ay when you step up to the call you have to give it your all. I agree with a lot of people, sticking the man of the night up front with Persie behind him, as much as I respect RVP, he needs to check his ego and realize that the Hunter is out of his cage and lost the key. Can’t wait for the next match and I can’t wait for Hungary…..would it be too greedy to expect the last score of 6-1?!?!?! God bless all of our beloved Oranje and supporters, we will take the EC and WC!!!!
Hup Oranje Hup!!!
I’m totally not surprised by VDV’s defensive capabilities, he’s always been good at chasing the ball and taking the ball away from opponents, the main job of a defensive midfielder.
What did surprise me was Affelay. I did see him give a few unusually accurate crosses in the Moldova game (I should say ‘purposely aimed at a teammate as opposed to just crossing it for the sake of playing a cross while the forward striker hasn’t found his position yet’), but I still couldn’t really believe he was getting better.
Now I have to admit, this was a serious opponent/test for him and he came through it with flying colours.
But I can’t give all the credit to Affelay now either of course, he can only make those nice crosses and goals because:
1. Sneijder breaks open the defence which such sweet passing (the little half-second waits to make the timing of the pass JUST right making it easier for his teammates to use the space and receive the passes really make my day, play the pass half a second to early, and his teammate can’t reach the open space in time, just perfection)
2. Hunter is in the right position for the cross (in front of the defender)
In the end, this game was not that dissimilar than the one against Moldova, both were very good, only this time, the chances did go in.
We’re on the right track.
I hope Kuyt will be fine, if I have to believe what I read here, it doesn’t sound too good. In the end, I guess he can be glad that he could go so long without major injuries while others around him always had so much trouble with their bodies.
Hunter and Affelay were just really clicking in the 2nd half, as were Sneijder and VDV in the first mostly.
Sneijder is just getting better and better, I wonder if his progress is somewhere going to end.
Posted from 
Netherlands
“In the end, this game was not that dissimilar than the one against Moldova, both were very good, only this time, the chances did go in.”
Which was in no small part due to Affelay picking up his game and remaing calm and effective in front of goal. If Lens had been able to do the same, it would have been 5 or perhaps even 6 goals.
Posted from Netherlands
Have a question – Have we incurred any yellow cards yet this tournament ? Any for bad tackles ? Compare this to other teams ?
Posted from Singapore
Lens should have passed the ball to Ruud (in the last minutes of the second half). I thought that Ruud could have finished that one. Lens was not good enough. I hope that Robben will recover soon. And, for the striker position: stick with Huntelaar!
Posted from 
Indonesia
Agree with Keeping Hunter…did you see goal number 4 ? at first I thought it was Affelay outpacing everyone it was Huntelaar then he puts in a perfect cross with his LEFT foot !! Brilliant too.
Posted from Singapore
I’m wondering if Cruyff will soon speak up about orange outstanding performance? He’s normally being so negative to orange and praised spain too much.
Posted from Australia
carlos or anyone
do you know link to download the match, this kind of performance I want to keep it and watch it again and again.
Posted from Australia
Someone mentioned here that there were no more games till 2011. A lot of us here had views on Guus’s dumb comments. Well dreams do come true !
November 17 Amsterdam ArenA – Holland v Turkey Friendly !! – Bring it ON !!!
Posted from Singapore
Jake – usually Caleb sends us a web page to copy. Worst scenario (let me know) I can show this match on Veetle one of these days as I have it recorded.
Posted from Singapore
BTW, a distinction should be made between me and the other Alex…from us..we’re not the same person xD
Posted from Netherlands
To Alex, How about I’ll post as Alex2
Posted from United States
Sure, or Alex 1 and Alex A, so there’s no hidden hierarchy xD. No Alex2 is fine, as long as there is some difference
Posted from Netherlands
To Alex, I’ll just write my full name (Alexander)
Posted from United States
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Watched the highlights, thx Adrian. That first goal was awesome. Afellay’s confidence will grow, how good is it to have him in great form, Robben and Elia to come back as well