when bert was asked who he thought played great today, he only mentioned rvp. no word on vdv and afellay lol. going by this performance my preferred line-up is now, rvp vdv - sneijder - robben afellay - mvb gio - mathijssen - heitinga - vdw stekelenburg afellay can defend as shown in this game and how he has played for psv this season while i think anita was too nervous today so we should go for gio's experience. i still think de jong should start ahead of afellay though lol, but i personally want to see afellay there. you all know my stance on vdv and kuyt, but i don't think anybody can deny that vdv was having the better game by far of the two today.
My thoughts on a few players: - Boulahrouz: Horrible, can't put in a decent pass or cross to save his life and needed bad tackles to make up for shoddy defending. - Braafheid: Gave some bad backpasses, but I think that was more due to nervousness. Deserves another chance. - De Zeeuw: It should be a criminal offence for him to shoot at goal, it's either going way over the bar or closer to the corner flag than the goal. Decent game otherwise. - Affelay: Man of the match for me, let's hope he'll keep this up. - Anita: Very eager, I think he held up well. The mexican goal wasn't his fault, you could clearly see him trying to decide which player to cover because Mathijssen and Engelaar weren't doing their jobs. Players who can start making other plans in my opinion: Boulahrouz, Ooijer, Schaars, Engelaar, Lens.
i was surprised to see that lens didn't get a look in actually. must be because babel is already sure of his place, can't really complain with that. we saw what today's game did to anita, lens will probably even more freaked when in south africa.
oranje 2 - 1 mexico we dominated most of the game, but mexico had a strong come back. they were played off the park in the 1st half though with rvp, vdv and afellay all 3 on fire. rvp with 2 goals in the 1st half, assists courtesy of vdv and afellay. mexico scored when heitinga was pushing up forward and mathijsen was unsure who to pick and defend against, engelaar and anita back tracked to late when the cross was sent and chicarito scored with a header. they were a lot more lively when vela and gio came in and we were not as convincing without vdv and rvp.
Will Hutelaar be a starter during the WC?....fifa website says he led the team in qualifying in goals. I am doing a world cup pool and I want to pick 1-2 dutch players (I am thinking Van persie for sure...not sure about second player...maybe robben?)
huntelaar will not start, he will mostly come from the bench for rvp. anyone of rvp, sneijder & robben are great choices.
Van Persie is out of this world. Had it not been for the fycking Italians, he would have taken Arsenal to win the Premier, and perhaps even the Champions would have been a different story.
Goal.com agrees with me: http://www.goal.com/en/news/1127/pl...1944201/player-ratings-netherlands-2-1-mexico
yea Mexico started with only 3 players from their World Cup team. 9 of the players from the England game didn't start. Mexico started playing better in the second half once the coach put in some of our better players, but still was only 5 of the players who will start in the World Cup I think. Nice plan by our coach, wait to be down 2-0 and then start to bring in good players. I bet you don't have coaches that brilliant in Holland
All in all this was a sub game. We had 5 starters from the 11, but that was also the case for Mexico. So no complaints in that department. First half was for Holland, second half was for Mexico. After we subbed v Persie and vd Vaart our level dropped. They brought in 3 good players and their level went up. Those two facts together were responsible for a game with two faces. First half especially the first 20 minutes were good from Holland. Affelay was active and we missed some good opportunity's. The two goals were strange. v Persie said in an post interview that it were two quality crosses, but that wasn't the case. If Mexico's defense and keeper were just doing things right they would have neutrelized those crosses who were long underway. The second goal was by the way from a finishing perspective pure class. But it should never have happened Second half Mexico played football. The reporter from sbs 6 was right we only encounterd that before with Japan first half and England second half. We were outplayed because of the factors I mentioned above. Funny enough Mexico had more ball possession than us. I would like someone to tell me when that happened to us for the last time. Another factor was the rain. Games always change when the pitch is getting wetter than is good for it. Also I thought it was quite fanatic and rough for a friendly. You could see that both teams wanted to win. It's very difficult to draw conlclusions from this game as to who can go to SA and who stays home. I would take Schaars over Engelaar. Braafheid over Anita. But there is not a big difference between how bad they are so another chioce by the coach isn't going to upset me. We will see tomorrow who is lucky and who stays home.
Euhmm... no. But we have had the pleasure in the past of being endowed with the kind of brilliance that takes out the best players at half time to allow the opponent back in... Nearly as good me thinks!
Nobody got hurt and we learned about a couple of players who won't make the trip to South Africa; that's all that was needed from this match.
That was no surprise! Overall good result proving that our reserves are better than Mexico's reserves (we clearly have more strength in depth), and that Van Persie's long injury spell hasn't stopped him being brilliant. I'm not even going to read the posts slagging off Kuyt but what I saw was Kuyt nicely setting up a couple of chances in the first half and being his good old self and working bloody hard again esp when we needed hard work in the second half. Also kudos to Elia in that regard (I'm even thinking Elia as left back, wouldn't that be an option?) Surprise of the night was of course Afellay, giving van Marwijk yet another option on the left wing - and in my opinion that sealed Babel's fate but we'll see this afternoon.
And the Dutch papers disagree. This is from AD.nl Maarten Stekelenburg: 6 Kende twee verschillende helften, een rustige en een vermoeiende. Werd evenwel zelden getest. Was kansloos bij goal en attent bij een door Mathijsen van richting veranderd schot van Vela. Khalid Boulahrouz: 5 Voelde het zwaard van Damocles boven zijn hoofd bungelen. Het gemis aan ritme - Boulahrouz speelde dit seizoen slechts 720 minuten bij VfB Stuttgart - deed zich voelen. John Heitinga: 6 Rots in de branding en met Mathijsen een zekerheidje in Zuid-Afrika. Wel verdient de communicatie met zijn compagnon in het centrum enige afstemming. Soms weifelend bij ingrepen. Joris Mathijsen: 6 Allesvreter deed ook tegen Mexico weinig fout. Sterker nog: viel op door een splijtende pass bij het openingsdoelpunt van Van Persie. Oogde in tweede bedrijf tikje vermoeid. Edson Braafheid: 5 Voelde net als Boulahrouz de druk van het moeten. Was een helft geen onverdeeld genoegen als linksback. Braafheid stapelde fout op fout en had veel moeite met het hoge tempo. Demy de Zeeuw: 5 Een tikkie onzichtbaar in de rol van Nigel de Jong. Matig in de passing. Werd te vaak overgeslagen als schakel tussen defensie en aanval. Stijn Schaars: 5 Ongelukkig als verdedigende middenvelder. Leed te vaak balverlies op een plek waar balverlies dodelijk kan zijn. Oogde wat flegmatiek en had moeite met de handelingssnelheid. Dirk Kuyt: 6 Werkte vanouds als een paard zonder zich te onderscheiden. Viel ondanks een assist op Van Persie niet op. Rafael van der Vaart: 6 Speelde niet onaardig op de aan Sneijder voorbehouden positie van '10'. Maar moet zich straks in Zuid-Afrika vooral concentreren op een plek in de linkerzone. Fraaie knal op de paal in de achtste minuut. Ibrahim Afellay: 7 Oogstrelend begin als hangende linksbuiten met fraaie rushes en fraaie balbehandeling en prachtige assist, die criticasters de mond snoerden. Viel - net als Oranje - na rust te ver terug. Robin van Persie: 7 Onmisbaar bij Oranje en nu ook al als spits een zekerheidje. Twee prima goals. Wie er straks in de punt van de aanval van Oranje moet is geen discussie meer. Vurnon Anita: 5 Onwennig als debutant. Kon na rust geen punten scoren in concurrentiestrijd met Braafheid. Orlando Engelaar: 5 Maakte vooral duidelijk dat het gat tussen De Jong/Van Bommel en de stand-ins erg groot is. Lijkt de strijd met Schaars te verliezen.
how so? mighty dutch said mathijsen was our best defender and i can't really see why the algemeen dagblad ratings seem to 'disagree' with that? lol at the bolded btw. they think vdv's assist came from kuyt instead, which could explain their ratings a bit.
where did they say mathijsen was not our best defender? they said both mathijsen and heitinga are certified starters & did they not awarded kuyt an assist he never made though? you can trust them all you want if they keep printing errors like that, i'm only pointing it out
vanzelfsprekend, watch what happends if they got the assist right. the scores don't match-up imo i think i'm not in the wrong in thinking kuyt's ranking would be lowered a bit if they had it right, while vdv may had a higher rating. either kuyt would have been given a 5 or vdv a 7.
no johan, they are rating everyone. that's what ratings are for. i wouldn't call "was invisible" a nice compliment to have though. "hey kuyt, i thought you did very well, i haven't seen you all game"