Euro 2016 Qualification Thread.

Its only a friendly, who cares who plays.

Lets just hope nobody gets injured like last time

 

I'm really disappointed that Pieters isn't starting, especially in a 4-man defense which he's already accustomed to.

And is anyone else not really high on Blind? I feel like @DRB300 hit the nail on the head when he described him in one of his posts as a "safe" option off the bench. To me, he's just sort of a jack of all trades, master of none kind of player.

At midfield I would take Stroot, Wijnaldum, Nigel, and van Ginkel over him. If all four of those players are healthy, I really can't see Blind getting a spot over them.

Remember, it's a friendly so Hiddink has 6 subs available, so hopefully we see guys like Pieters, Narsingh, Afellay, van Dijk, and Depay brought on in the second half.

 

Van Gaal is a special case. Van Gaal is always about proving to the world how genius he is, unfortunetaly you could see that he didn't have balls enough to go till the end of his tactic when he changed Cillessen with Krul against Costa Rica. While most of people called him genius for having done that, few other ones understood that he was just showing big weakness with doing it. You start with the unexperienced Cillessen while most of people want Krul, then go till the end, keep him till the end and assume it. Don't change him when you are scared to lose against Costa Rica and to be insulted by all dutch medias. Van Gaal's plan was just like :

1) If I let Cillessen and we lose (which was probably going to happen as he never caught any penalty), everyone will criticize me for not having started the world cup with Krul. Which seemed to be the most rationnal choice.

2) If I put Krul and we lose, I can still say that Cillessen was too unexperienced for PK, and that I had more faith in Krul. And many dutch fans/medias would think the same.

He just went for the choice where he would have the less problems with. And few days later he proved how bad he was with spoiling all the subs before to put Krul again and admitting it in the post interview. Amateur mistake. Almost the same than Legia Varsaw using an illegal player against Celtic. When you play a world cup semi finale against Argentina, you should think about everything you'll do before.

Now well, that's not the point. You say that he used young players, ok he did, but not as good as Van Basten did in 2005. Van Basten truly made a revolution, Van Gaal was just opportunist once again, he had a golden generation in 95 with Ajax, had a very good team in 2009 with AZ, and had Robben in 2010 with Bayern and 2014 with Holland. Also he had new young defenders with Holland in 2013. Which were supposed to be more promising that the older ones. So tell me where you give him respect and for what ?

1) The defence was good during the world cup, ok, but we can't know what other coachs would have made with De Vrij and Blind. Vlaar was already good with BVM in 2012. Can we really say that the defence was good THANKS to Van Gaal ? We will know it in few years.

2) The midfield looked really poor with Van Gaal. De Guzman flopped his two first games and Wijnaldum was barely better. Without to mention Sneijder that played his worst major tournament. Van Basten went for Engelaar in 2008, total surprise, and Engelaar did really good against Italy, though flopped against France and Russia after. But Wijnaldum was just average/bad in every game, except the Brazil one which was useless.

So to answer your question, I'd say that he only shined with the new defenders but that was opportunistic. Van Marwijk would also have called them if he was still the coach. It was just impossible to let Mathijsen and Heitinga. Something new should necessarly be tried. And Van Gaal logically did it. Expect that, what special did he do ? He let VP who didn't do better than 2010, he put a keeper that was less good than Van der Sar and Stekelenburg in 2010...

 

I think BMI will be serviceable for many years ahead. I likened BMI to Heitinga to many extents... a very physical defender, decent in the air, but lacks of speed and prone to make some head-scratching moves. Agreed that he won't be a "world-class" defender per se (i.e. I wouldn't built my team around BMI), but I would be glad to have him around and perhaps pair him with another CD who complements him. Best thing to happen to BMI is to stay healthy and get consistent playing times. I think Heitinga lost a lot of development time due to his injury history, especially in his early days in EPL.

Interesting point you made about a DM-Runner-Passer model. The Runner (B2B) is what the team is lacking right now. I like the energy of Wijnaldum and I think he can fit in the model with some learning curve. He can score goals, which is a plus, but he needs to be more commanding. In W.C he looked timid, he wasn't aggressive enough to demand the ball. Maybe now that he's off a flying start at the club level, he will have more confidence. I wonder if Afellay will be given a chance to fulfill this Runner role. He's the perfect guy for this, at least on paper, though admittedly I haven't seen him playing since his disastrous moves to Barca. And with Van Ginkel soon to be back on the pitch (that's the hope with him moving to Milan), finally there's option and competition on this. Until Stootman comes back, I think Nigel De Jong in DM is more than sufficient.

 

Fun fact:

In 3 major tournament games Italy has never beaten Holland and has yet to score a goal.
Record is 2 wins for Oranje and 1 draw. NL scored 5 goals in those 3 games, Italy scored zero.

All Italy wins have come in friendlies

 

so van gaal did put on youth? furthermore show me precedent in major international tournaments where a coach subs out the goalie for a penalty kick shoot out.. someone doing it before van gaal

the same van gaal who changed formation 3 months before the tournament.......

all i see is negativity for no reason. the truth is in international football you can only select those with the dutch nationality, it's not like a club team that might or might not be able to sign other players. add in injuries and you do the best you can with what you can. plus there is always behind the scenes reasonings behind things like how van persie is "injured" misses a friendly and plays the very next game for arsenal.

and on the goalie issue, vermeer was van gaals favorite, stekelenburg had played badly and was frequently injured, krul was leaking in plenty of goals at newcastle and offered nothing in terms of build up play, vermeer was benched, so realistically it was between vorm and cillessen for the style of play that van gaal thought would bring the team success.

Furthermore he decided ahead of time that krul would get switched in for penalties, the only issue was the way he didn't let cillessen know, which might be bad for the development of cillessen. but otherwise what more can you ask of the guy.

 

BMI is actually quite fast. De Vrij is slower IMO.

 

Anyone know of an online site to watch this match? Thanks.

 

Fantastic start from the defense...

Edit: It honestly looks like Cillessen doesn't even believe that he can stop a penalty anymore.

 

BMI ran at an angle away from the goal to try to get to the ball, rather than staying goal side of the player. Resulted in the Italian player getting goal side of him as he lacked the speed to catch him

 

The ref isn't to blame for BMI taking down the italian player in the box, as the last man back. That's not even up to interpretation from the ref

 

LOL....nice start to the Hiddink era