Four Hurdles to the goal: WC2018

Maybe you can have too many talents and he doesnt know who to select. Deschamps is rotating heavily at the moment looking for the best formula. If he finds it france wins the world cup. If not brazil probably will although ive got my doubts about them too.

Re the 4-0 against us- i blame dick for the lack of direction. Down to 10 and a couple down, tell everyone to sit

 

Dutch football is ill. Feyenoord, Vitesse, NT, Ajax...Of course there are some positive things here and there as well, but as a whole dutch football is sick and coachs are not to blame.

 

I get what you are saying, but still shouldve been able to make the playoffs especially when i look at some of the dross there, greece? Rep of ireland? All there cos they have a manager who has given an idea of what to do on the pitch.

 

You get an occasional outlier like that. I knew lightning wasnt going to strike twice when they played Sweden after their France draw.

FYI the Czech Republic lost against Luxembourg which allowed our pathetic team to qualify for a Euro (or was it a World Cup, I can't remember now)

 

I agree with you to some extent.
A vGaal type manager wouldve seen us get 2nd spot at least

 

I agree with you. Unfortunetaly none of them players get punishments for their boring lateral back passing.

 

I just checked with Guiness world records, and Holland hold the world record of back-passes with 1, 5486, 495, 567, 0000 backpasses.

True story.

I'm not joking

 

Another extremely frustrating qualification campaign ends in disappointment.

Needless to say it could have gone a lot better on the coaching front (namely Blind!) and from the players themselves during key games, but on the whole we were still unlucky to fail to finish above Sweden:

- In the first Sweden game it was only a Strootman error and Dost's goal ridiculously being disallowed that prevented us from getting the win there (and this was even still under Blind!)
- The horrendous Lloris error to gift Sweden the win against France
- Both Belarus and Luxembourg uncharacteristically collapsing at the wrong time when facing Sweden (a nonexistent penalty helped open the floodgates against the latter)
- And of course still having Blind as coach during the Bulgaria game..

In the end France finished only four points clear of us, so even first place in the group could have been possible with slightly better luck and with Blind out of the picture from the beginning. The loss at home to France was also very unnecessary for instance..

I can't say I'm overly thrilled with some of Advocaat's decisions and tactics (especially against France), but to be fair he stepped in when things had already decidedly turned against us. Through no fault of his own, we had to start what was always going to be a tough game in France knowing that even if we managed a draw it might still put qualification out of our hands (if Sweden won in Bulgaria). So although after the event it seemed obvious that we should have played for the draw, at the time it wasn't readily apparent.

I have no doubt that, even now in our weakened state, we have the quality on paper to qualify comfortably for Euro 2020. It's just very disappointing that we now miss a World Cup which in the end should have been well within reach.

 

How many could retire on scoring 2 goals in an important match for a win (even it was not enough) at the age of 33? Thank you Robben! I won't forget your 2004 debut, 2008, 2010 and 2014.

 

”I enjoyed tonight. It was special but difficult because we are still playing for something although it is unlikely we would achieve our objective tonight. ”It’s tough because you know that everything you do tonight is for the last time but I had to focus on the game because I wanted to show what I can do one last time and I did it.”I also have to compliment my teammates on who we played tonight and we were so professional. The reality is hard because we miss a major tournament.

”I have thought long and hard about my decision to retire from international football I am 33 years old. I weighed up retiring from international football beforehand but I decided to continue and I do not regret that. I wanted to finish the World Cup qualifying campaign. I do not know how my career will play out from here on in. ”I play for a top club in Europe in Bayern Munich and I want to keep that going for as long as possible so you have to make choices. This is a good moment to pass the baton on to teammates.

”Things must now change we must not look at how we can improve the structure here in the Netherlands and that is a big task. ”I have a lot of highlights and I feel proud and honoured to have represented Oranje for 14 years and I am also proud to have played in 6 major tournaments. My highlights were the two World Cups in 2010 and 2014. We had a really strong team with a close group and I really enjoyed.“The last 14 years have been fantastic.”

http://www.football-oranje.com/arjen-robben-announces-international-retirement/

The greatest Dutch player after Cryuff retires from International Football. He may not be perfect & he may have missed some chances but none can deny that he is a magical, amazing player & he left his heart & soul for the country playing with pride & passion.

In an era where many football players retire from NT Duty well as soon as they get 30ish, Robben continued playing till he was 33, trying to get Oranje into the WC, playing Qualification games when he could have done with a lighter schedule focusing on his club.

Thank you Robben, you always played with pride & passion everytime you put on that Oranje jersey.

 

Robben, our last world class player.
Thanks for your dedication! He will be missed.

Don't think Sweden deserved to qualify for the play-offs.
In our 2 matches, even with our problems, we were better.
They really relied on luck more than skills. Very frustrating!

 

Basically they only owe their qualification to Lloris doing that stupid mistake and giving them three points in the last minutes.

Other than that they didn't do better than the Netherlands at all.

 

We are talking exclusively about the national team here. The match against Bulgaria in Sofia is the main cause of our elimination. He should never have played De Ligt. I am not saying that he is the only one responsible but that he is the first cause.
The eliminations of Ajax, I mentioned elsewhere and it is mainly due to the lack of stability in this club.

 

112 - Arjen Robben scored or assisted a goal once every 112 minutes for the Netherlands (37 goals, 29 assists). Farewell. pic.twitter.com/macLLT3ROE

— OptaJohan (@OptaJohan) October 10, 2017

 

I think that over the last few years we have overestimated our true value. After the elimination in the European Championship qualifiers, many observers thought it was a mere accident. We live a real deep crisis. Robben, 34, was the best player on the field yesterday. Our leading striker, Janssen, does not even have a hundredth of Hasselbaink's talent. That is to say how much we fell down.
Now we must not be too pessimistic, I think that there is a growing awareness of the shortcomings of our football even if there are disagreements between different specialists. Piet De Visser or Fred Rutten say Dutch players do not train enough in comparison to the Germans, English and others. A fact confirmed by De Vrij, Willems and Wijnaldum recently.
But the physical aspect does not explain everything. Technically also, our players have serious shortcomings, proof by Depay. But as I often say creativity is innate and we are not lucky to have at present new Bergkamp or Gullit.
But the worst for me is our coaches. I get the impression that they are outdated and they do not know the requirements of modern football. It is no coincidence that De Boer was fired twice.

 

One could be salty because of the many things that went wrong for us in this qualifier run: The wrongly disallowed goal against Sweden, France bottling it against Sweden in Sweden due Lloris screwing up in the dying minutes of the game or Luxembourg for blowing up against Sweden but in the end the blame lies with us.

Blind should have been fired after he failed to qualify us for the Euros but instead, we let him keep blundering on until things became unsalvagable. Even then, I wonder if we could have made it. These last couple of matches have shown that the problems with our team run deep and cannot be fixed with a quick change of coach. The team lacks guts, flair and any self-confidence hence the constant backpasses. Most of these problems can be attributed to Van Oostveen and his gang. They wanted to change everything in our youth academies and put the focus on "defending and winning mentality". Safe to say that didn't happen, quite the opposite actually. Let's hope with this debacle the last of his narcissistic goons will be ousted soon. I hope that the KNVB will take notes of the German, French and Spanish youth academies and start improving our own.

I doubt Sweden can make it out of the playoffs, they are quite an average team but then again a lot of these in the playoffs now are quite average too.

French supporters have little cause for joy as well, despite having all that raw firepower they continue to underwhelm thanks to their crappy coach Dechamps. They know that with this team they should win the world cup but they know it is not gonna happen with Dechamps in charge and much to the horror of French fans he won't get fired anytime soon.

 

I think it should also be investigated why our last generations of players tend to flop ouside Eredivisie. I mean, since Babel and Drenthe generation who actually won the u-21 Euros, to Depay and Jansen. You can’t only blame that for Players leaving the Eredivisie a little bit early. Quality players will succeed evantully even if they had a bad first transfer. I mean, look at Bergkamp, Davids and Robben for example. They all had an average to bad first transfers but their talent proved itself elsewhere at the top level. They didn’t have to go to Turkey to revive their careers.

 

Robben was a phenomenal for Chelsea, winning the Player of the month & performing consistently when not injured. His 1st big transfer was a huge success & that is the reason why Madrid bought him. It is also a rare case in a way, he was 19-20 odd & straightaway went to a big EPL club which won the League & become a top player in the entire league.

 

Muller (when in form) is world class, as well as Hummels and Boateng

 

Yes, sure he was in his first season. but his last season with Chelsea was bad for him. Mourinho benched him for Shevchenko and Ballak. That's why he decided to leave in the first place.

 

If we qualifies for Euro 2020 and Robben is still playing top notch at Bayern, I hope whoever coach the team at that time can convince Robben to come out of retirement and earn a spot as a sub. You can still use him (say at 80% of what he is now) at the last 20 min as a pinch hitter. He will be 36.

From (http://www.football-oranje.com/netherlands-named-top-group-uefa-nations-league/) Oranje are in Group A alongside Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, France, England, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Iceland, and Croatia. I think the last 2 wins vs Bulgaria and Sweden helps. For this, Dick A. and the team at least do something good (what Danny B. has done?). Assuming we are at the bottom with Croatia, Iceland and Poland, I hope we can get Portugal and Switzerland for our group of 3.

According to UEFA’s website:

• The teams will be split into four groups of three next January, with the group winners then contesting the UEFA Nations League Finals (semi-finals, third-place match and final) in June 2019 to become the UEFA Nations League winners. One host country will be appointed in December 2018 from among the finalist teams.
• The four sides that finish bottom of their groups will be relegated to League B for the 2020 edition.
• The top four-ranked League A teams that do not qualify for UEFA EURO 2020 will enter play-offs in March 2020, with one finals place on offer.