Majestic Oranje - Euro here we come - Official Euro Thread

That whole 'Holland should play like Barcelona' argument is ridiculous. We don't have a Barcelona-quality squad. It's like telling a squad without wingers to play a 4-3-3 system regardless. If Holland played like some of you here want them to we'd be slaughtered against quality opposition. Thankfully Van Marwijk is more inclined to be realistic. As for 'we're murdering our football culture' do me a favour, it was part of our culture once to wear clogs and live in windmills, stop living in the past. Football has changed, watch a game of 1988 football and you'll be amazed at how slow it was even that recently.

Also I personally do NOT consider the Barcelona style attractive at all. Tiki taka and the endless linkups even in the penalty box gets incredibly tedious and I'd much rather watch a pacey, direct game of football. The point being that there's no such as ONE attractive style of play.

Finally give this team a chance before you judge it. I'm old enough to remember NUMEROUS incredibly crap pre-tournament campaigns that led to Holland surprising everyone.

 

i'm not saying to play like barcelona, thats ridiculous , i too hate tiki taka, it's boring, but playing like the eredivisie would mean winning like barcelona, and when i say Holland become the barcelona of international football i mean get the plaudits of the media, play even better with dutch style, and win a lot, and it would be nice to have the referees help us out when we play bad!

lets be real, the dutch league is only weak because all the players that get developed leave, can you imagine an ajax team with sneijder, van der vaart, Luis Suarez, Huntelaar, maybe not ibrahimovic because he didn't get along with van der vaart, but ajax with nigel de jong, maybe heitinga, van der wiel, stekelenburg, maybe ryan babel and maduro stayed, we would have a majority club team playing for holland, that would give us a big time advantage over everyone else we play.

 

So you remember we qualified for that world cup thanks to an offside goal?

 

The Dutch league isn't weak. It's strong in many respects. It doesn't have a lot of TV money, that's what's limiting it. Ironically the fact that it doesn't have a lot of money forces it to focus on developing youngsters, which in turn is helping our national team and Dutch football in general a great deal.

I'm Dutch too and will always favour attacking football - if that's an option given the player material. I couldn't give a monkey's about getting the plaudits of the media to be honest, the Dutch media are dominated by old farts and Cruyff mouthpieces, they live in the past, and while the BBC lists Anita as Holland's starting left back in their tournament preview, I'm not going to take that lot seriously either. Considering the way the team was welcomed in Amsterdam despite losing the world cup final and getting slaughtered by the media, I think I'm pretty representative of the Dutch public in that I couldn't care less about what everybody else says.

 

its perception versus reality, I know for a fact, all these pundits don't know anything, because it's impossible to watch every team play, they watch a few highlights, and read the scoreboards. at best a match summary, I've been trying to watch every team at the euros play, and i fell short, I couldn't watch portugal because Holland was playing at the same time, and i missed france, and poland. But everyone else i've seen at least once.

and the perception is the Dutch league is weak because teams don't win in the champions league, and the europa league. and if you try and tell the viewing public, who's not in holland, belgium and a few other places, that this guy willems is good, this guy van der wiel is good, this guy strootman is good, they look at you weird and assume they suck, they keep repeating the same stuff over and over again.

Holland defense is weak, Holland is a group of thugs, Holland tried to play anti-football, and that same media is all praising chelsea for winning, bunch of hypocrites.

I think it's important the worldwide media like holland, more fans, means more money, more fans means more cheers, means influencing referee's in our favor, in america they did a study about the home team vs away team getting calls in all sports, and the percentages varied, but it remained true that home team usually get all the calls.

 

We didn't have money even when the world liked us. This is all down to TV revenues and being a relatively small country and language we'll never have that big tv money. Like I said, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Being forced to focus on the bottom half of the pyramid rather than on the top half (i.e. the way the FA does on the premiership) may ensure the commercial success of your highest domestic professional league, but it certainly does not help the state of your domestic football in general, not in the short term and even less likely in the long term.

 

Was it Raphael Honigstein who called the Dutch-German rivalry a "rivalry of love"?

In any case, our traditional rivalry has really left past unpleasantness behind and has shifted to an affectionate ribbing. There's a lot of mutual respect for the other's football. We love the many Dutch players who've made it to the Bundesliga (ok, perhaps not Robben...), the many fine coaches that have enriched our game and 'em orange fans.

 

Can this thread stand a topic about the starting players...or is there another thread it would fit in better?

The question that I would like to see discussed, "Can the 4-2-3-1 system see Huntelaar, RVP, Sneijder on the field at the same time?" Specifically can RVP play behind Huntelaar and Sneijder play next to van Bommel or de Jong and go forward when Holland has good possession?

 

Ajax were a top 10 revenue team in Europe when they won the CL in the mid 90s. The big Italian and Spanish clubs were ahead of them, which is why they kept losing their stars to clubs like Milan, Barca, and so on, but they weren't poor by overall European standards.

Then TV money kicked in and things change.

Language isn't a problem because you can always get people who speak English to call your games, and most of the stars in the league speak English. But you'll never have the glamour of Italy, the atmospheres of the Bundesliga (not that Eredivisie atmospheres are bad, but 20,000 vs. 50,000 is no comparison), the reach of La Liga in Latin America, and so on.

I think things will improve a bit in the future, though, as Ajax being good will center more attention on the league as Ajax are really the only worldwide 'brand' in the Dutch game. Not enough to make Ajax a big player in Europe economically, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Eredivisie gets a bit more money in their next round of foreign contracts as Ajax are being feted for their style of play and success.

 

Maybe in Germany but I don't think it's a rivalry of love in Holland. I don't think it's got that war aspect to it anymore, as most of the war generation are dead/dying off, but people definitely want to beat the Germans.

I'm not Dutch though, so that's just my impression. Maybe the real Dutch disagree.

 

Zero Dutch players.

 

I wasn't aware that that guy who scored two goals for us today wasn't Dutch. Learn something new every day

 

Yeah, 'cause Barcelona really needed Afellay in 2011. It wasn't Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Pique, Busquets, Mascherano, Puyol and Valdes, Eto'o, Ronaldinho, Deco, and so on - it was Afellay, van Bommel (not that JC14 will mention that) and Gio.

If Xavi was Dutch, van Marwijk would do cartwheels. Hell, if Pique and Puyol were Dutch van Marwijk would be doing cartwheels. But they are not.

 

Doesn't change the fact that you made an incorrect statement. You said that Barca had zero Dutch players. That's an incorrect fact. Even if it was true, I'm not sure what it would have to do with anything...

 

dude you got burned, get over it, and maybe they did need affellay cause they didn't win the champions league or la liga

 

You know what I meant, don't be fey.

Barcelona only win because they have some of the best midfielders ever to play the game. Look at Arsenal. Wenger is obsessed with Barcelona, has been for years. When arsenal have space they love playing in the little triangles that Ajax and Barca made famous. But Arsenal win jack because they don't have the players, and they won't as long as the board takes CL qualification for granted.

Look at Barcelona this year - only the Copa del Rey because Villa and Pique got hurt. They lost a couple players and they became falliable, held by an utterly pedestrian Chelsea side.

I take back my previous statement - van Marwijk would be doing double cartwheels if Puyol (well, disregarding that he's not fit right now) and Pique were Dutch because almost everything that separates van Marwijk's Oranje from a 4-3-3 or a 4-3-2-1 is down to the fact the back four sucks. We have to play those two turkeys in front of the back four because they can't be trusted on their own.

 

Agreed with some of your points. Except Barca failed to win a major trophy this year because Real Madrid were better over the entire season and Chelsea's defensive wall could not be breached. Barca lost Pique to what exactly? Shakira? All respect to Villa but he is not a major influence at Barcelona. If people want blame "finishing" then how come Messi scored 79 goals (club and country) this season playing in a striker position. They had major options on the wings (Sanchez, Pedro and Iniesta to name a few).

Also I would like to say that van Bommel and de Jong both gain maximum respect from me because they were one of the main reasons we were able to reach the World Cup Final and they are key players in the squad right now. Very solid players.

 

Obviously. Just because it's a "rivalry of love" doesn't mean that both nations want to win those games less than in the past.

The rivalry is just very friendly these days. There's a lot of mutual respect, familiarity and indeed affection to go around between the two.

 

euro 2012 will probably be his last tournament, bert van marijk stated before for players like elia and kuyt not to move to turkey because it would be away from the scouts and he couldn't pick them for the dutch team. so kuyt doing this move in a way has announced his international retirement, hopefully he retires on a high (euro champs)

 

There's always been mutual respect, without it you'll never have a proper rivalry to start off with. Alongside Spain, Germany is now the sweetheart of the Dutch football pundits. Living near the German border I can assure you however that when an international tournament is around the corner we hate Germany like we did in the old days. The only country we'd like to see fail even more than your lot is Portugal because they (unlike Germany) are Pure Evil.

My point being: the Dutch football media are totally unrepresentative of Dutch public opinion. See the way the Dutch national team was welcomed back home from the last world cup after they were slaughtered by the media.

 

The starting XI is sorted and set in stone with the exception of the left back position. Huntelaar will start on the bench, Afellay Van Persie Robben is our attack with Sneijder right behind them.

 

Having travelled with Twente and the Dutch national team quite a bit I can safely state that there are plenty of unique attractions to the Dutch league.
- Dutch eredivisie stadiums are the most modern, comfortable and safe in Europe
- only the Bundesliga has a better atmosphere
- Dutch clubs play the most attacking football in Europe
- Dutch clubs field the youngest players in Europe - where else can you see so many stars of the future
- The Dutch league is the most competitive at the top of the table

The international media are controlled by the British and the Americans. And these broadcasters are far more likely to have Italian/German/English/Irish ancestry than Dutch, I might add.