Doubtful that he will have the same quickness at even 33. The only midfielder that I think is playing a high level at this age is Pirlo and he doesn't have to do anywhere near the running around the Sneijder does. He stays deep and relies on guile rather than physical ability these days. Sneijder would have to play that game and we would have to see what the tactics of the team are at that time.
Ballack was still pretty good when he was 32/33 years old. His game was not based on speed or quickness though, it was more of vision and composure. I think Sneijder can still boss the midfield in the next 3-4 years... his passing is incredibly good, when he's on form, that is. We desperately need somebody playing alongside him with high intelligence and creativity (i.e. Clasie, Strootman) to support Sneijder. I feel that Oranje has been a little too much reliant on Sneijder in the past couple years. When he was off beat, the whole team crumbles. As he ages and his impact diminishes, somebody else need to step up to the plate. A trio midfield of Sneijder, Clasie/Strootman, and De Jong (the shut-off valve in midfield) is pretty solid in my opinion.
For the future Anita-Clasie-Strootman is the way to go. Sneijder can mentor them. Maybe if Clasie cant handle physical opponents & cant play 90 minutes him or Sneijder can be a SUB. That is it. For the sake of the NT,that is the way to go. All guys have vision & good attacking play with Solid Defensively play. This is a Boss Mid-field. Complete Boss. Whoever comes if it is a guy like De Boer I am sure RVP will never get a chance. He has failed all his life with the NT. I was trying to remember when in 1 Big Tournament he did brilliantly well or even very Well & I could not remember. The Future ST may not be Hunter,it could be Dost or Luuk taking a huge step too. The ST position is going to be a No Holds Barred Position. The team is build around Sneijder playing as a No.10 so its slightly easier for him to shine. I wonder how he will do in a 4-3-3,maybe better considering how good his long passes are. THE DEFENSE should be 1st Priority. The elimination was caused by poor defense not attack. Portugal match showed if you your defense is horrible then you cant attack. I hope that is PRIMARILY addressed. With Clasie,Strootman,Anita coming up De Jong should be tried at CB now. Its time. There is no one exceptionally good at Defense. Lets atleast try De Jong.
Sneijder was lazy and complacent in this tournament. Defending and backtracking were seemingly beneath him. Out of all our alleged superstars, only Van Persie worked hard and I respect that a lot in him. It wouldn't hurt Sneijder to be benched once in a while if you ask me. He's clearly got spoilt, whether he's aware of it or not. But he needs to be made aware.
Ballack was bad at 32/33 compared to his prime. He has been consistently bad for years now & Leverkusen have dumped him. Other than that only the future can say how great Sneijder will be. He was just VERY AVERAGE to Bad in the last 2 games against Portugal & Germany,real opposition & bossed an average Denmark in a formation where everything is build around him. I respect him as a player. Legend. I will wait to see how good he is. His club situation is bad. But the new punks might never reach the level of a Sneijder,that is a possibility too
To be fair he tracked down & supported Willems when he was forced to play at LW. He was a complete DUD at LW. He only got a bit better when he moved CAM & went left & create. But from the touchline he is horrible,you cant see he is not a winger. Not to blame him though. Sneijder did have 2 Very Average games after 1 Great game against a seemingly weaker opposition against Denmark. Too bad people dont call out on that. Does not make him less of a Legend.
This is precisely what the problem was in my opinion BaritoPutra. Sneijder thought he was Ballack in his early thirties but unlike Ballack he didn't have any grafters around him. He didn't realise or didn't want to realise it. For some reason they all (with the exception of Van Persie and De Jong) thought the work would be done by somebody else. Oh boy are we going to miss the onform Kuyt of yesteryear for the next couple of years. What with the public and media all pushing for creative geniuses I hope to god the new coach realises a team is about balance, not about fielding eleven players Cruyff would approve of.
He's a brilliant player, even today. But he is not the type to forget about his ego when the team needs it. He needs a wakeup call if you ask me.
I remember a while back that people calling a Trigger Happy No.10 & I disregarded that. I did not like him shooting all the time but a player of that class can score goals from those range & is thus allowed to shoot. Same with Robben. Although Robben is getting a lot of flak after WC & CHL defeats. Who does not have a big ego?? VDV. Great player,far more talented that Sneijder or any other No.10 in the last decade but he literally caused dissent & politicked his way to a Starting 11 Spot. This is why I said,if you wont start VDV,dont take him. He will cause all sort of issues. Last year before WC's RVP had to give statements saying KUYT has 0 talent & does not deserve to start which was not needed before a major tournament.
Xavi's doing pretty good for a 32 year old. If Sneijder moves to a club where they require him to defend he could be as good at 32
Xavi is a bad example. They play Tiki taka. Among say 5 Good passes they play 100 Meaningless one's. They always have possession,control the tempo. Xavi does that,controlling the tempo & playing diagonal passes mainly. They still need Silva or Iniesta or Torres for creativity upfront. I am sorry to say if Xavi played for Oranje with his style of play he would flop massively.
I don't believe for one nanosecond Van Persie said those things so unless you have that on videotape showing him saying those words I'm going to dismiss it outright. If the situation calls for it you need to step out of your comfort zone regardless of what your star status is.The only one who did that this tournament was van Persie. And although he was rubbish at it, he gets my respect for it.
Sneijder did not track back at times vertical (he did chasing in the final third), but not so much out of laziness. He refuses to play dumb football and he is right. I can't count the number of times he shouted to defense to move up and start to "doordekken". In the first 10 minutes of the game we played football against Portugal. We even saw that great interception of Mathijsen in Portuguese space. Why did that stop? Why did we start to walk back? Why would Sneijder move out of zones where he is dangerous when we need 2 more goals? First and foremost we need defenders that listen to Sneijder. The problem of this team was not that it was build around Sneijder. The problem was that during Euro 2012 it was not build enough around Sneijder. When Heitinga gets communication from Sneijder to move up and close down those Germans, then he should have followed that up with action. Heitinga rather liked to move back and accumulate on defensive mistakes rather then play football and make an effort for fast recuperation of the ball and delivering it fast to the creative minds in the team. Against Portugal we started to walk back again and dumb football was the result. Apparently van Bommel could not make this clear to defense either meanwhile only patrolling the midway section himself. So Sneijder needs a new assistants in the axis of the team in DM and defense that have the same vision as him and the football brain to carry it out. Both Anita and Clasie spring to mind for DM. In defense maybe Viergever, but not good enough yet. Maybe Nigel turns out to do well. Sneijder and Huntelaar had the strongest will to win this tournament.
I'm not talking about will, who can look into the heads of people to start off with, and having the will to win doesn't always mean you make the best decisions. Sneijder likes to have a specific role in this team and won't deviate from it. My point is that if he was a real leader he would've done what was required of him when the circumstances demanded it of him. Take Janssen in his Twente years. I cannot tell you how much I cursed him back then because he was crap more often than not, and lazy even more often (you never got to see that in the match highlights). We forgave him for it because when push came to shove he became a mean, nasty little MF working his arse off because he KNEW something had to be done and when. That's what I've been missing in Sneijder this tournament. In previous tournaments this fault in his character was glossed over by an on-form Bommel and Kuyt who both naturally are full of fight. This time it wasn't. I'm a big fan of Sneijder as a player as he's clearly great. He's not exactly the type to get you out of trouble in difficult circumstances though. And even though we have a lot of talent coming through, I'm not quite sure who's going to take up the fighting role in the years to come.
I doubt if Kuyt does not have the will to will. Or Boula or Bouma but they are past it. The team cant play on the whims of 1 man. If the whole team has to change their play & go away from their comfort zone,then Sneijder should be dropped. Mathijsen is a 34 years odd slow Mediocre CB who cant keep with Ronaldo or Nani tactically or speed wise. There is a limit to rubbish expectations for only 1 self's benefit & not the team. Again I think Sneijder should have been played at No.10. Against Denmark the team was based around him & he did well. Sneijder at LW did not work. He is still a Legend but this stupid Whole team needs to be his slaves & him being a coach should stop. In an ideal world a Fully Developed Anita-Clasie-Strootman midfield is the Best Option as all can defend & attack & dont need slaves around them. But these punks might never be in Sneijder's league though.
My subjective observation of body language and expression of the eyes. The decision of Sneijder was aimed on winning Euro 2012, not to prevent 2 or 3 isolated extra goal scoring opportunity's on top of the 24 Portugal got, or the ones Germany got. He thought after Germany we were knocked out and needed to score goals as van Marwijk and his staff had not informed the team what the possibility's were. Again Sneijder aimed to play the football that was needed to win Euro 2012. The football he aimed to play, would have taken care of preventing dozens of goal scoring opportunity's as fast ball recuperation would cut off outbreaks in the first place. We saw Mathijsen doing it against Portugal in the first 10 minutes and I and Sneijder are still wondering why the hell they started to walk back. Him running 3 or 4 times extra 60 meter up and down to do some tracking would have done really nothing. Apart from that I just presume you have missed the first half against Portugal. What was demanded of him was to make clear to the whole team what they needed to do. Heitinga payed the price of not listening and could sit down on the bench. The first 10 minutes we finally played like Sneijder wanted, then they stopped listening and started to walk back again. That situation is hopeless and then it comes down to putting the right personnel behind Sneijder that carry out what he wants. Why? Did he win the triple for his team? Did he brought Netherlands to the WC final on his own? With his big mouth shouting he would play in Dutch NT when he would reach the age of 19 years. Sneijder did not talk about it. Sneijder was 18 or 19 years old when he brought Scotland on their knees with 6-0 qualifying us for Euro 2004. What does Janssen know about winning on the top level that Sneijder does not? I have seen Sneijder working hard, but I have also seen his struggle with the way this side has been playing and it pained him. He tried to reverse it, stood up, but he couldn't get the back line on the same page for longer than 10 minutes. Kuyt by the way was very lazy in the friendly sub appearance against Bulgaria. Van Bommel for me has not worked very hard. RVP has worked pretty hard, but in a really dumb way as far as it goes against Portugal. Maybe if he would have started to echo what Sneijder was saying the back line would start listening. Sneijder was all alone in this struggle to get it right the way I feel it. Like in every game in the WC 2010? Like Denmark feeding ball after ball on RVP and Huntelaar. You win that game, you have 3 points and don't have to go for broke against Portugal. Sneijder did everything to get us out of trouble. Or like in the WC final when we were pressed and he launched Robben to put him one on one against Casillas? I don't see an energy bunny as Kuyt either. Strootman does posses temper. It's funny so many people fail to spot it.
Sneijder has his qualities, and these qualities are quite considerable. Thinking outside of the box and lifting the spirit of his team mates aren't among them however. Feel free to disagree, this is just my opinion. A leader he ain't.
^I'm on DRB's side here. To me the only two players who seemed to want to will themselves to do better were Sneijder and de Jong. Robben and van Persie were basket cases throughout the tournament. Sneijder did a very good job despite playing out of position because of BvM's decision on the formation against Portugal. The reason he yells at the other players is because he is able spot the things that they are doing wrong. Nothing the matter with that.
I think the real need for the midfield is a box-to-box midfielder. Sneijder and De Jong are on the opposite spectrum. One is so focused on attack that he leaves his post when defending, the other simply doesn't have the attacking qualities needed to pass or bring the ball forward. We need somebody who can balance this.... somebody who can go to penalty box on one moment, and then tracks back to help defending the next minute. Somebody who doesn't stop running and covers the entire pitch from end to end. I guess this has been Van Bommel's job but he on the fast decline. He walks, and the speed of the game catches him by surprise. I am looking at the pipeline, and maybe one of Strootman, Clasie, Anita, or Maher can fill this void. Also, I've said this numerous time, but I think it's worth to mention again that Afellay will be a lot more effective playing in midfield than on the wing. He has a huge lung and his speed is an important trait in both attacking and defending. He certainly has the technique to play the ball on his feet, to launch passes, or to shoot from distance. Afellay on the wing to me is a nice experiment, but a waste of his talent.
^but it's important to remember that a couple of years ago, Schweinsteiger was the #10 for Bayern, so it's no surprise that in a 4-2-3-1 he can go forward with the offense. Khedeira was the same kind of player at Stuttgart before he moved to Madrid and Mourinho has him paired with Xabi Alonso.
I've not been all that impressed with Fer going back to when he was at Feyenoord. He seems to zone out of matches at times and appears lazy but then he creates a moment of brilliance. If he can increase the latter and decrease the former he will be a decent choice. He's currently starting on the U-21 NT that stands on top of their group.
here's my first XI that I want phased in over the next two years Maybe keep van Persie, although I have my doubts about him working in this system based on the quality of finishing required from the striker (which he doesn't have). Also I have my doubts that he would work any better with Anita and Sneijder rather than just Sneijder