Alert: Next decades Netherlands will be the new Hungary of Europe. Once great, but slipped into mediocrity.

3th option comes closest to how I currently feel about it. But that's what it is, feelings which are a horrible way to measure and predict the future of football. If we look at other countries we see English clubs doing well but their National Team hasn't reached a semi-final in 16 years (22 years if you look at World Cup).

Football is the most popular sport in our country and I can't see any challenge to its position. Attendances are relatively good as well if we take the size of our country in account. Take South Korea and notice how one good run at a WC can change its football climate.

Short term it is possible that we won't be able to compete or qualify for Brazil, but the extension to 24 teams at a euro solidifies our place there without a shred of doubt unless we utterly destroy this sport in our country. And we'll always have a chance when we qualify, football is too popular here and assuming that should means you'll produce some talent. Maybe the grand days of the past are over, but I can't see us becoming a Hungary.

 

What happened to us in the 80's can happen again. I will try to make an overview about our situation and back it up with old articles in the weekend. It is a very interesting period in Dutch football, especially how we saw ourselves in those years is fascinating.

 

Hoping for the best on this topic and knowing the culture of football in Holland I am sure the youth will continue to develop however at this moment things are concerning:

Loss of confidence top players

Loss of form many players

Lack of experience young players

Lack of vision KNVB i.e. Van Gaal

Ultimately this current state of affairs should improve as Oranje do have quality IMO its just a matter of finding the right mix of players and tactics.

 

Overdrijven is ook een vak DRB.

All that happened is that Van Marwijk waited too long with breaking in the next generation. And now Van Gaal is going completely overboard in rushing the young generation. We're a (relatively) small country among all the big football nations so it's not exactly strange that we don't consistently avail of world beating generations.

Dutch football is fine at the core. We've never had more active football association members. Our football facilities are excellent even at the lowest level, as is the quality of our coaches.

The only real problem is that our talented youngsters leave the Dutch league far too early. And unfortunately that is completely outside of our control.

 

This imho is the root cause of this 'little' quality gap... too many otherwise talented players chasing doughs and wasting their development times on the bench of some top clubs, instead of getting playing times at Eredivisie level.

The irony (or maybe, the good news) is that, aside from RvP, who is an obvious class, no young players have had a considerable success playing abroad in their early careers. Bruma was perhaps a prime example... Once hailed the new Jaap Stam when he broke Chelsea line up when he was 16/17 y.o. Seems like he now succumbs to mediocrity. Had he chosen to play at Eredivisie in the past 2 or 3 years, he would have gotten the right 'education' and experience. One can only hope that this is a reality check for the youngsters, and now they can start make the right decision. Once this starts happening, I am convinced Oranje will be flooded by nice talents and rise up again.. back to where they belong

 

Tim Krul?

 

^very rare exception

 

That will be very interesting.

What I know is that the Dutch clubs and FA basically 'killed' youth football in the late 60s and early 70s. Thanks to club interests and other minor interests, youth teams were simply not enrolled at youth-tournaments.

The early 80s saw many action plans and one of the identified bottlenecks was the lack of youth football.

IMO, this was only really cleaned up after 1985. Michels became manager of the NT again and gave more priority to the amateur-branch of the FA. The necessity of that was not new but Michels had the weight and influence to change it.

 

Per capita, Spain and Germany have more qualified coaches with a proper degree.

Plus, they are better in tracking down talented kids in rural areas. That used to be a disadvantage of stretched countries but they can now afford such an expensive system.

And someone like Mohammed Allach in charge of the FA is the perfect recipe for destruction and failure I feel.

 

How are Spain better in tracking down talented kids in rural areas, exactly? There's no way in hell that a talent goes by unspotted in the NL. You could of course argue that there hardly is any genuine rural areas in this country.

 

I worded it a bit unprecise: it is not only the observing of talent but also offering the opportunities to rural areas. Spain and Germany made a great effort in that.

 

I don't quite understand how that puts them in a favourable position compared to the NL. Outside of the north we don't have any genuine rural areas. Unless you're assuming that we've missed out on several unspotted Frysians, Drentenaren and Groningers. And even in those parts of the country, the smallest village will have a well run football club...

 

Reminder, still curious.

 

I won't forget it.

 

I'm not so worried, although people have a point that things are worse than a couple of years ago. The qualifiers are still doable. But we will not play a big role on the European or world championship in the coming years. We have to accept this.

But the ''new Hungary''? No way...

 

It's the 1960. The Dutch came up with the remarkable idea to start a professional youth-competition where the best youth-teams of the Netherlands would compete against each other. This, combinded with pure luck, was vital for the golden century of Dutch football. Before the Golden Century started, the Dutch teams made sure it won't last long. Given their money problems and because of dumb money-based arguments they all decided that a B-team would be more useful than a youth-squad in 1968.

Dutch Football bloomed thanks to the youth-setup in the 60's, Ajax dominated European football and the Netherlands got famous with total football. But in the mid-70's, the upcoming disaster was getting clear. Rarely any talents arrised from the amateur youth-setups, the low level of these amateur youth-level competition was blamed. Quickly many attempts to restart the youth-competition arrose. But many of these plans failed. In the mid 70's, the KNVB came up with a plan for a youth-squad for players between the age of 17-19. PSV Eindhoven came up with a different version of this plan, they wanted a youth-squad for players between 19-22 and room for 3 older players. All the Dutch clubs prefered PSV's idea above KNVB. For many years, KNVB attempted many times to introduce a youth-competition for lower ages. But every time, money was the reasons these plans failed. This re introduction of a youth-squad was the foundation of the squad that won the European Championship in 1988. Gullit, Rijkaard, v. Basten, Koeman....

In 1985, some talents did show up. However, both U21, U17, U19, U15 NT youth-squads where no force in European football. Koeman, Rijkaard, Gullit, v. Basten already played in the Eredivisie
and where tipped as talents, but many where still unsure if they would become the stars all hoped they once would be. The reputation of football in the Netherlands has never been lower. Tennis was
close in becoming the most popular sport in the Netherlands. It was expected that if the Netherlands would produce one world-class tennis player, it would beat football as most popular sport. This didn't happen. In these dark ages of football, where the attendances where low, most teams had financial problems and it was unsure if the Dutch NT would once be a world-class team again. There was a general feeling something hád to happen. Under Rinus Michels, KNVB finally managed to introduce younger youth-squads for professional teams who play against each other in a youth-competition. Amateur sides were not happy, since they would lose most of their talented kids to professional teams. Anyway, they got some sort of compensation and both the professional teams and the amateur teams would play against each other in a national competition. This was a mixed success, some claimed the difference betweeen the amateur sides and the professional teams where too big. The amateur side where also not happy to see that their best players where often placed on the
bench. Many of these kids returned to a amateur team because they wanted to play football. Anyway, one year later it was decided that above a certain age the amateur clubs will not be part anymore of the youth-competition. It is 1986/1987. the Netherlands had missed the 1986 World Cup thanks to the well-known huge victory by Spain. But the average level during the qualification was low, and likes as v. Basten only performed if they had their 'day'.

Ajax suddenly, it was never expected, won the Cup Winners Cup. But the general believe was that this was mostly due to the lack of quality opponents. The lost match in the Super Cup against FC Porto, FC Porto was much better, supported that theory. But it was a magnificent performence and gave the Dutch some believe. But this rebounce of Dutch football was not thanks to the re-introduction of the younger youth-squads in 1985. The stars of this generation only played in the U22 squads. This might have been pure luck, that so many world-class players originated from a poor youth-setup ánd with a low average level of the Eredivisie. But it happened, I believe you can claim that the re-introduction of
youth-football U22 squads in 1975 safed Dutch football, while the re-introduction of the U19, U17 and lower created the foundation for a 25 year-span in which we have been a top-10 football nation in the world.

Sorry, had not enough time to make a better story. But the situation in the 80's is not comparable to our current situation. There is no reason to expect a quick downfall of Dutch football. It has never been more popular and the youth-setups are from a high level. The only danger is the fact most of the talented kids leave before they become 18 and you often hear more and more fans from clubs such as PSV claim that they should stop with investing in their youth-setup. Please let we not make this mistake again!

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For those worried about there not being as much new talent coming through as say 10 years ago (i.e. the eve of the Robben-Sneijder era) take a look at what Van Gaal just said:


Van Gaal is in his second spell in charge of the national team and is eager to avoid the mistakes of the first. He added: "In retrospect, I retained the old squad too long.
"And while it was maybe logical as I didn't see many great talents coming through, luckily I have them now."
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminaries/news/newsid=1698359/index.html

I know this is Van Gaal (so should be taken with a grain of salt), but at least it helps to show that it's certainly not all doom and gloom for Oranje and that it's not always so easy to predict when new talents will show up.

 

@ Paganitzu, good work.

When Van Gaal took over in July 2000, guys like Robben, VDV, Van Persie and Sneijder weren't in the equation yet so that is logical.

 

you know I remember reading a comment for Cruyff in 4-4-2 magazine around 2000 where he said Dutch football was in trouble with little talent coming through apart from van der Vaart. Well that wasn't quite true was it, few people expected Sniejder to be as good as he is (and certainly not better than Raffie) and RvP wasn't on anyone's radar either. There are always cycles but as Paganitzu said the development programs are top notch and soccer more popular than ever. The main problem dutch football has is players leaving too early to rot on a bench somewhere. Hopefully, a few well celebrated flame-outs will cut that back a bit. I do worry a bit about development programs becoming a bit too regimented too and not helping players develop their creativity - maybe someone else can better speak to that?

 

Talent is always available. The end result however is a matter of culture, training, guidance, etc. It's not just coincidence that England produces different kind of players than Spain does. Or that Germany produces different kind of players than Brasil does. It's a result of the 3 aformentioned factors.

I don't believe football is cyclical. I think it's a matter of whether that talent (that is always there) get's spotted and stimulated properly. I think the developments currently and in the past few years in the academies of Ajax and Feyenoord will have a positive influence on the development of proper technical footballers.

PS: Robben, Van Persie and Van der Vaart had quite a reputation before 2000 when they were still youth players.

 

Statements like in the last paragraph are not very hopeful. If one of the better Eredivisie talents isn't seen as a match for Reus....

 

Well, who expected that Gomes would fail in England while Vorm would be rated as one of the better goalkeepers in England. Everybody who would have predicted that in 2006, would have been called mad. De Jong might fail, but it does not have to say anything about the level of the Eredivisie or level of Dutch talents.

Who expected Tioté to be thát good?