The collapse of a nation NL lose 3-0 to Turkey..

[tzijlstra]

So, international break and the Dutch confirmed that losing 1-0 to Iceland was not a fluke, in fact, we probably should be happy with that result as we then got trounced 3-0 by a pretty average Turkey side in Istanbul.

 

Absolutely astonishing what has happened to the proud Oranje. A few years back Guus Hiddink was appointed manager, not a lot of people were happy with that, it was a backwards appointment people argued, the man had his best time over ten years ago and Oranje needed a forward thinking manager, especially with an excellent class of young managers emerging, Koeman (Who was promised the job and then ditched for Hiddink), Frank de Boer, Ron Jans and so on. Well, the doubters were proven right. Hiddink never got the team going and so he left during this summer after months of speculation. Unfortunately he probably took a lot of money with him as the KNVB decided to appoint right hand man Danny Blind (father of Daley). Blind has failed every time he was in charge, a sure sign he is no more than an assistant at best. Two games under his reign and we have lost to Iceland and Turkey and hopes of qualifying for EC 2016 are pretty much dead.

 

It is astonishing because the talent available is still good, here is a list of names of players that are under 25 and part of the set up:

 

Cillessen (Ajax GK, linked with Man U and several other big clubs last summer but stayed put)

Stefan de Vrij (Lazio, CB - hailed as one of the biggest defensive talents of his generation)

Virgil van Dijk (Southampton, CB never got a chance under Hiddink)

Jeffrey Bruma (PSV CB)

Daley Blind (Man Utd, utility player with good level of skill)

Bruno Martins Indi (CB, Porto, considered massive talent)

Georginio Wijnaldum (CM, Newcastle, finally reached his potential last season)

Vurnon Anita (CM, Newcastle, considered a tenacious midfielder)

Jordy Clasie (CM, Southampton, excellent player and captained Feyenoord for years)

Davy Propper (CM, PSV, long dubbed biggest midfield talent)

Memphis Depay (CA/LW, Man Utd, needs no introduction)

 

 

Add to that the old guard, Van Persie, Robben, Sneijder, VdVaart, Vlaar, Huntelaar, Janmaat, Pieters and so on and this team should be ruining the likes of Iceland and Turkey...

 

The Dutch are mortified, are our talents no longer good enough? Does our game not work anymore? It really is astonishing to see that a team with, in my opinion, at least the same talent levels as England, Italy and perhaps even Germany, can fail so hard.

[TJC1]

So, international break and the Dutch confirmed that losing 1-0 to Iceland was not a fluke, in fact, we probably should be happy with that result as we then got trounced 3-0 by a pretty average Turkey side in Istanbul.

 

Absolutely astonishing what has happened to the proud Oranje. A few years back Guus Hiddink was appointed manager, not a lot of people were happy with that, it was a backwards appointment people argued, the man had his best time over ten years ago and Oranje needed a forward thinking manager, especially with an excellent class of young managers emerging, Koeman (Who was promised the job and then ditched for Hiddink), Frank de Boer, Ron Jans and so on. Well, the doubters were proven right. Hiddink never got the team going and so he left during this summer after months of speculation. Unfortunately he probably took a lot of money with him as the KNVB decided to appoint right hand man Danny Blind (father of Daley). Blind has failed every time he was in charge, a sure sign he is no more than an assistant at best. Two games under his reign and we have lost to Iceland and Turkey and hopes of qualifying for EC 2016 are pretty much dead.

 

It is astonishing because the talent available is still good, here is a list of names of players that are under 25 and part of the set up:

 

Cillessen (Ajax GK, linked with Man U and several other big clubs last summer but stayed put)

Stefan de Vrij (Lazio, CB - hailed as one of the biggest defensive talents of his generation)

Virgil van Dijk (Southampton, CB never got a chance under Hiddink)

Jeffrey Bruma (PSV CB)

Daley Blind (Man Utd, utility player with good level of skill)

Bruno Martins Indi (CB, Porto, considered massive talent)

Georginio Wijnaldum (CM, Newcastle, finally reached his potential last season)

Vurnon Anita (CM, Newcastle, considered a tenacious midfielder)

Jordy Clasie (CM, Southampton, excellent player and captained Feyenoord for years)

Davy Propper (CM, PSV, long dubbed biggest midfield talent)

Memphis Depay (CA/LW, Man Utd, needs no introduction)

 

 

Add to that the old guard, Van Persie, Robben, Sneijder, VdVaart, Vlaar, Huntelaar, Janmaat, Pieters and so on and this team should be ruining the likes of Iceland and Turkey...

 

The Dutch are mortified, are our talents no longer good enough? Does our game not work anymore? It really is astonishing to see that a team with, in my opinion, at least the same talent levels as England, Italy and perhaps even Germany, can fail so hard.

 

Good analysis but off the mark...it's not a fluke. The dutch are pretty average these days. England, Germany and France have better squads.

 

The old guard are past their best. Van Persie, Robben, Sneijder, VdVaart, Vlaar (who is injured by the way).

 

some old guard have never been 'world class' - janmaat?

 

and the new guard are young / unproven or simply not world class....Anita? Clasie? Van Dijk????

 

if any of these players were world class, they would be playing for top 4 teams.

 

the dutch have had their 'golden generation'. The current squad isn't as good as other top tier nations.

 

And that's why the dutch haven't qualified.

 

---------- Post added 07-09-2015 at 10:46 ----------

 

positives are 4 or 5 players, who are young that have to step up to the mark.....if the dutch can develop further.

 

I'm thinking the spine of the team is quite decent.

 

Cillessen

Bruno Martins Indi

Daley Blind

Davy Propper

Depay

 

If you lot can build a team around these talents, the dutch could be competitive....

 

---------- Post added 07-09-2015 at 10:55 ----------

 

To put into perspective ENGLAND would have walked the dutchies group....that's how far the oranje have fallen.

Edited September 7, 2015 by TJC1
.....

[tzijlstra]

Good analysis but off the mark...it's not a fluke. The dutch are pretty average these days. England, Germany and France have better squads.

 

The old guard are past their best. Van Persie, Robben, Sneijder, VdVaart, Vlaar (who is injured by the way).

 

some old guard have never been 'world class' - janmaat?

 

and the new guard are young / unproven or simply not world class....Anita? Clasie? Van Dijk????

 

if any of these players were world class, they would be playing for top 4 teams.

 

the dutch have had their 'golden generation'. The current squad isn't as good as other top tier nations.

 

And that's why the dutch haven't qualified.

 

---------- Post added 07-09-2015 at 10:46 ----------

 

positives are 4 or 5 players, who are young that have to step up to the mark.....if the dutch can develop further.

 

I'm thinking the spine of the team is quite decent.

 

Cillessen

Bruno Martins Indi

Daley Blind

Davy Propper

Depay

 

If you lot can build a team around these talents, the dutch could be competitive....

 

---------- Post added 07-09-2015 at 10:55 ----------

 

To put into perspective ENGLAND would have walked the dutchies group....that's how far the oranje have fallen.

 

You are correct in stating there is no world-class talent, but the Dutch have performed far better than this with lesser talented squads. In this group, which you rightly point out England would have walked, the Dutch should have dominated.

 

I appreciate that some of the names don't mean a lot to you, but guys like De Vrij and Strootman (before he got injured) and Clasie should be performing a lot better. There is a consensus in the post-debacle analysis in the newspapers that the biggest weakness is Blind's continuation of the 4-3-3 (totaalvoetbal) system, it has had its best time. The only way that works is with real wingers, like Overmars, Robben, R. de Boer and others we have trained in the past, but these days we don't have the quality on the wings to go and dominate opponents and we need a new system. This group is going to do a lot better for the 2018 qualification and a lot of these names are going to be household names in the top of Europe again.

[tinfoilhat]

Two of your four midfielders play for Newcastle.

 

Case closed.

[tzijlstra]

Two of your four midfielders play for Newcastle.

 

Case closed.

 

Haha, that is true. But then Cabaye plays for Crystal Palace and Shaqiri for Stoke, so it can't all be terrible

[TJC1]

You are correct in stating there is no world-class talent, but the Dutch have performed far better than this with lesser talented squads. In this group, which you rightly point out England would have walked, the Dutch should have dominated.

 

I appreciate that some of the names don't mean a lot to you, but guys like De Vrij and Strootman (before he got injured) and Clasie should be performing a lot better. There is a consensus in the post-debacle analysis in the newspapers that the biggest weakness is Blind's continuation of the 4-3-3 (totaalvoetbal) system, it has had its best time. The only way that works is with real wingers, like Overmars, Robben, R. de Boer and others we have trained in the past, but these days we don't have the quality on the wings to go and dominate opponents and we need a new system. This group is going to do a lot better for the 2018 qualification and a lot of these names are going to be household names in the top of Europe again.

 

 

I think you need to rebuild...every nation has a transitional period..look at germany 2000.

 

---------- Post added 08-09-2015 at 15:51 ----------

 

In 2 or 4 years the dutch could be back....

 

---------- Post added 08-09-2015 at 15:53 ----------

 

Look at england teams...graham taylor, we were garbage

Carlton palmer and andy sinton...

[Jim Hardie]

Is the team united though? It's not always been the case in the past and I still can't get my head around the way Cruyff let down his country in 1978.

[The Joker]

Is the team united though? It's not always been the case in the past and I still can't get my head around the way Cruyff let down his country in 1978.

 

Good point.

 

As much as I have a soft spot for the Dutch (their footy fans hate ze germanese even more than I do) I don't think they've ever been a "team".

 

Even the 1988 Euro Championship winning team had the odd bust-up, with Marco Van Basten threatening to leave the squad and go home if he didn't get to play (the threat worked).

 

And Cruyff stuck it to the national team again as manager a decade or two later, demanding huge bonuses and other financial incentives for leading them into a tournament (after his predecessor had done the hard work of qualifying the team).

[blake]

Holland can just choke it. Although before this, their qualifying record for the Euros has always been good, they are not automatics in the World Cup. After they got to those two World Cup Finals in the 1970s (and which was the first time they had ever done anything), they failed to qualify for both the 1982 and 1986 World Cups and they were also not there in 2002. So it should not be too much of a surprise when they fail to make the cut.

 

Holland are not like Germany. They are not automatic shoo-ins to qualify for international tournaments. However these results are especially dreadful. With the Euro tournament being expanded to 24 teams, you would have thought they would have made it.

[tzijlstra]

The unity in the team is a very good point. The team performed great in the past three big tournaments though so you can't argue it has never been there. Van Marwijk (Except for the Poland/Ukraine tournament) and Van Gaal (in his second stint) made sure the ship was in order, Hiddink never got it there.

 

May I also argue the point that although the Netherlands are not like Germany, they have massively outperformed England over the past two decades.

 

It isn't like the Dutch to perform like we are currently and although one can (accurately) argue that the players aren't as good as they were in previous tournaments they should still perform a lot better than teams like Turkey and Iceland...