About Van Gaal ... I'm not a big fan of his leadership style ... everyone on the pitch is turned into a slave of his vision. Hiddink is the better people manager ... he creates leaders on the pitch ... I often get the feeling that this is more important and arguably he's the better tactician (for a national team) too as he has managed plenty of NTs.
Red part: I think Guus had a score to settle with the Dutch government about the way they treated him in a tax case, like he was a criminal. The purple part: Advocaat set the picket lines by putting Kompany on his place when he thought he was mister Big and simply chose to come a day later then he should. Advocaat told him he didnot have to unpack his gear as he could get on the plane back. No one did that before as the people before Dick were rabbits afraid of the socalled big names. Shit head Kompany was taught a lesson and with him the rest of the Belgian wannabees for the National Team, "You arenot bigger than the National Team!"
I was aware of his 'fiscal woes' but I feel that there was more to it ... let's call it a deeper lying emotional scar instead of 'beating' the taxman on the pitch ... still I can't read his mind so you could very well be right and he stooped to a low level as this would be a very petty grievance. I'd complain more about the toothless FA, the subpar coaching effort before Dick took over and the lack of professionalism across the board ... the issues with the players are only partly to blame for the crisis but if everything else was as it supposed to be, these issues might never have played a significant role (besides it's always better to look at the cause of why our players were underperforming and once you've fixed that ... journalists will have to do without superficial bickering and bide their time untill the next 'controversy'). In any case Kompany wasn't the instigator ... actually he had fought the most battles to get back on track ... regardless ... if Dick wanted to set an example to restore discipline, picking on Kompany is much more effective than using Fellaini's socks to get his point across. Going through 5 managers in a very short period is far from optimal ... so that will cause anyone to at least have mixed feelings ... I don't think AZ will be happy if Dick jumps ship and I hope he feels comfortable there ... he still has one Belgian at his disposal: Martens. Back on topic: Hiddink until Russia2018, Kluivert keeps up the performance at EURO2020 and then Seedorf ... most likely will have won the UCL as a manager at least once.
So apparently Hiddink it is. I would have preferred someone younger, but De Boer isn't going to do it, which leaves very little choice. Hopefully it'll turn out better than his last stint in Turkey.
I'm confident that he's the best choice ... why not add someone younger to his staff, cfr. 'grooming' Rijkaard for EURO2000 ... who do you feel would fit that bill (being groomed for Russia2018)? Hiddink joining the technical staff after EURO2016 ... I assume to focus on youth development ... looks promising.
I'm OK with Hiddink, I just hope he's not over the hill yet and has a few good coaching years left in him
Re: Brilliant Oranje - The smallest nation on earth to have ever reached 3 WC finals You are also the tallest nation of people in the world - Maybe Netherlands should abandon total football for one world cup and just air raid the opposition.
Euro 2016 qualifying draw... Group A Netherlands, Czech Republic, Turkey, Latvia, Iceland, Kazakhstan Pretty nice!
One of the easiest groups around together with the one with Spain. Will have to see what Iceland can bring in the coming months, but Czechs and Turkey NT are on their way down as of late.
Hiddink vs Turkey. Should add a bit of spice. Hope Hiddink has the venom to prove to his old employer he still has it.
Will Turkey keep their current manager on ... maybe they'll offer Advokaat a huge bag of monnies Nah I'm hoping Hiddink will win you over ... best of luck.
I just want to ask netherlands fans, If they think their nation has underachieved in the international spectrum relative to their quality of football as a nation. Or is their achievement record a reflection of their nations football quality in the end. I believe they have more quality than their achievement record, do Netherlands fans agree, and if so why are you then underachieving? I would like to see the brilliant oranje win a major tournament in my life time.
Both I would break it down in 2 parts. Your question jumps kind of over it, but you can not just skip on addressing the quality production first IMO. Netherlands has done very well in producing top players for many years now. One might call that overachieving. Many bigger football country's have produced less top players. Netherlands also produced top coaches. Dutch clubs have done well in Europe up until "recently". Only after last season Bundesliga clubs won more CL titles than Dutch clubs and the winning goal was scored by a Dutch player . On top of that, Netherlands has inspired the football world with their football. Maybe not something that one can measure, but it is definitely there. The result body (only looking at it game for game) over the past 50 years should, without a shred of a doubt, be labeled as overachieving: Source Elo ranking over the past 50 years weighing and rating every result of above country's. Netherlands ahead of football country's like Italy, Argentina, Spain, France and England. Country's with double, triple or even bigger populations. As a general comparison, Germany should be ahead of Brazil then, but there is quite a margin between the 2. This is where part 2 starts for me. Looking at it, Netherlands is the only country in that top 8 without a WC. That sucks. The thing with the WC's though is that the sample sizes are actually not that big. Losing 3 finals sounds as a lot, but it can happen. All top country's have lost finals. An important factor in all this is being host. That works 2 ways. First of all Netherlands has never organized it (Qatar with their impressive contributions to football history should apparently be considered before Netherlands). England won their only world cup at home. France won their only WC at home. France lost the other WC final. England did not even reach another final. Home advantage is huge. Not only in football, also with the Olympics. Look at the final medal result of today: Russia won the medal race, while not even in top 10 in Vancouver: Oh and who was on top then? Right. Obviously we have to factor in entries of host, but the energy, focus, support and money that comes free as an organizing country makes a lot of difference. So there is that. Second of all Netherlands actually got the pleasure of meeting host in two of their finals. I see it this way: Netherlands in their 3 finals got either the host (Argentina 1978), a legendary team (Spain 2010) or a combination of the two (Germany 1974). There are other important details like shorter paths in the past. England was champ after 6 games. Netherlands 3 times had to go through 7 games to become champ, though the first two had a different setup from the England WC. Uruguay also had interesting paths to say the least. It's interesting as well that since the paths have become longer those two country's never managed to get into a WC final again. That being said, in 2000 Netherlands should have won the Euro. Host and missing 2 penalty's in regular time playing the biggest part of the game against 10 Italians. A pretty impressive defensive achievement from Italy, but also a big failure from the Netherlands. Looking at part 1 of my story I just can't wrap my head around Netherlands ever being linked with the label underachievers. I even think Netherlands belongs to a small group that punches high above it's weight. Pound for pound pretty high up I would say. Once taking that for granted and looking what that has translated into concerning silverware, one might say a bit more could have been expected. On the other hand one could also ask themselves how a team was ever able to get past a Brazil with Andre Ooijer in defense. That's just trolling the football community. John Heitinga. Van der Wiel. Gio. Stekelenburg. Look at these boys career now. Not van der Sar, Stam, de Boer quality I would say. How did a team ever go on a 14 game winning streak all the way to the WC final and got their shot to win it with that defense? That was overachieving. IMO the silverware story is too simple. There is context to the losses and also context to the silverware some other country's have won. Cheers
Great post, thanks for your time and effort. It was reading a good article in the paper. You gave me insight into factors I wouldn't of just considered had you not directed me to it.
Off topic a bit. I missed the news last week that Van Marwijk was let go as trainer at Hamburg. Pretty short stay!
Club is in panic and suffers from mismanagement at the top. Van Marwijk started not that bad, but he was not able to turn the ship and got into a losing streak. Verbeek is doing quite well by the way. Moving away from the relegation zone with Nurnberg. Playing a bit attacking football along the way. I read a Nurnberg forum the other day and they sounded hopeful with Verbeek to stay in the Bundesliga. Jos Luhukay is also still doing fine.
I believe, given the size of Holland, we actually over-achieve. Still cant believe we made 3 world cup finals with a population of only 16 million. EDIT: I see DRB300 pretty much answered it for me
I think that if you look at the population size relative to other major football countries, we're a pretty big overachiever. However, when you look at what we've accomplished with some of the squads that we've had, we're also an underachiever. We produce more talent than a country of our size should, but maybe we've also failed to capitalize on that talent to do as well as we could.
While that might be true, you also need a bit of luck. Rensenbrink hitting the post in 1978 didnt help. Also, Germany & Argentina were host nations in '74 and '78. Had we been the host in one of those years, things probably wouldve turned out very differently. I highly doubt Argentina wouldve beaten us in Amsterdam
I'm not so much thinking about the times when we made the finals or won so much as the times when we had the quality but just didn't show up, or didn't seem to actually be interested in winning.
And of course there is the 1990 WC squad that massively underperformed given the available talent (also two years removed from winning the Euros).