@DRB - correct about Van der Wiel, he started as a central defender in the youth and I thin Van Rhijn did as well. I don't know why everyone is moaning and groaning based on one semi-final in an U-21 tournament. There are a lot of good players on the NT squad and 'if' van Persie can find his goal scoring light bulb to turn on the team will do just fine in Brazil assuming they continue to play the way they are in the qualifying group (remember we have not yet locked down a ticket to Rio!). I think DRB hits it right with the versatility of the potential team. van Gaal has always liked players who can be moved around the pitch and I think he's just the right one to manage this group. The next two matches are against Estonia and Andorra so this thing can be finished off with six points as we are seven up on Hungary who stand 2nd.
Forgive me but I've been reading through some of these posts and the majority of them come off as "elitist" bigotry/snobbery. I lived in Tilburg for 6 months this year with my girlfriend and most of the guys we knew were huge football enthusiasts obviously (our Tilburg friends were born and raised in Brabant but the majority of them supported PSV) so invariably they were my point of reference for Eredivisie information. What I discovered was that practically all of them were extremely humble football fans and even though they had passion for their Eredivisie teams, they knew the limitations of their players in the context of what their famous Dutch predecessors accomplished on the world stage and what they were worth by comparison. Seeing as how a lot of the posters on here seem to come from the Randstaad areas of the Netherlands, it seems that Noord Holland football fans are completely out of touch with Zuid with respect to football humility, clearly...
Brazil, Japan and Australia are already qualified for the WC. It would be very cool to be the first European team to do so. Not sure that would be the case if we do win both games, but we must be up there with the fastest I guess?
To be honest he is playing pretty sloppy for his standards Their DM is actually a nice footballer as well. Nice hattrick from Thiago but that pass from Koke between the 2 Italian defenders on to the little man Thiago was the highlight of the game so far. Italy is dangerous with their over the top passes that is so typical of the Italian competition of we look at the statistics. Not a bad final so far.
I don't think it was a penalty though. The player tipped the ball away first and then he glided with Tello making him maybe trip or come down. However the ball was cleared already. Not sure what the rules are, but to me that is proper defending.
They didn't score and Italy did. I stand by my statement that Italy are not very good. They bunkered down against us and got the goal they needed.
Bad clumsy ugly playing striker, wingers that were ineffective (Wijnaldum) or checked out (Ola John), an attacking midfielder who is just very bleak and simply not "there" yet (Maher), two ideal son in laws in midfield that are not in the higher echelons of technical refined players capable of bringing more complex football patterns and triangles on midfield, backs that were mediocre against Italy and a bench consisting joker options for the CB positions, one costing us dearly conceding a goal for us. Also Zoet is not a very good distributor. We simply are not anywhere close to Spain able to punish an oke/mediocre team like Italy. Spain is pretty far ahead of everybody. They are with their U20 at theWC and with a bunch of big talents, won the U21 tournament with ease and their senior team is performing their usual Boa Constructor act demoralizing and squeezing life out their opponents with their 70+% possession playing style. They win Euro's in multiple age groups back to back, senior Euro's back to back and actually are also a huge force in futsal at the same time. They simply kick ass, and Netherlands answers with an NT style that plays more direct and skipping stations on midfield to set up their attacks according to van Gaal. That is for me code language for: We have no players and can not produce players able to perform perfect close controls, first touches, short passing and vision to dominate midfield higher up the pitch like Spain does. The vision at the KNVB is one of denial or accepting defeat at best.
I tried to tell that to an Italian in another threat and he answered with one ad hominem fallacy after the other, backing off to comment on the game itself. He went as far as equating this Italian U21 team with Sachi's Milan team. Italy got outplayed by Netherlands and Spain and because Spain is simply better on almost every position, they did finish the job properly. My only frustration is that we will never know how the Dutch A team would have stood up against this Spain. We have to thank Cor Pot for that one.
What is your view on the competitive edges that Spain has? Both in quality and depth? Is their grassroots superior including physical education at school? Such a big and prolonged dominance is pretty unmatched since WWII. Even Brazil during their heyday couldn't do this.
IMO it's a choice they made and implemented in a more fanatical way than anybody else. Especially at Barca. Mind you, when Madrid plays Barca, they get the Boa Constructor treatment just like any other NT against Spain. So special attention to this club. If you choose for not passing over more then 10 meter as a general rule, if you aim for getting the ball back in 6 seconds, if you get your NT players together at a club and keep them healthy all the time, then the system feeds back regarding the players ability's. What I mean by that, to pull off 70%+ possession so far up the pitch, you automatically demand an unmatched skill level in the world day in day out. Has there ever been a country with football institution (s) that aim so fanatically at keeping possession of the ball and build a rule set of behavior around that, that they guard so sharply? Ones that system is in play and a core of carrying players is formed, we see the birth of so called system players. I always refer to Ajax mid nighties for this. Kiki Musampa, Nordin Wooter. Players that do not have the level of the others, but who can get along reasonably to keep things going. Look at Cuenca at Ajax. Look at Tello today. Is it so special? No, not really. Once they have to operate outside that system, they become pretty normal or even average players. However the way they were educated did at least enable the system to not get derailed. That means a country is not depended from a select few but can easily swap players in many positions. If Ajax 1995 was not destroyed by Bosman I am convinced they had won 2 other CL titles and Dutch NT would have gone winning something big or even multiple big things. That group fell apart and the system that was honed at the club's training sessions were not shared together any longer. It still pisses me off. The exceptional high volume of passing that Spain has made their own enables them to have grip in every game they play. The style by default enables them to dictate the terms as they have the ball. The more touches the opponents ball magicians get, the bigger the chance something negative will happen for Spain. Their style however enables them basically to say: we don't fight your great football skills, we make them irrelevant, making the chance that something unexpected happens smaller and smaller. Most ball magicians don't like the off ball work so that is win-win in Spain's case. We see the power of choice also back in the yellow and red card system of their league. That is a simple choice actually and further strengthens development towards technical play. You brought up the number of Spanish coaches with a UEFA license. Basically that is a choice as well probably encouraged by some policy's in one way or the other. Onces success is achieved (significant silverware) further excellence is triggered, more organisation enabling that success is structured, more energy is focused on the success formula as people really believe in it and more momentum is gained. This is the upward spiral. IMO it's just a right choice taken to the extreme. KNVB is still in denial. Van Gaal has agreed to renew the Dutch style towards more direct play, skipping stations in midfield in order to enable quick attacks. Basically the AZ system after he failed to become champs with them. AZ played basically some kind of counter football to become champs after all and that is becoming our identity if it's up to van Gaal and his KNVB buddies. This system will never demand most from players. It does not demand the levels of close control, first touch, short passing, vision that the Spanish system demands from players. That is why we produce mediocrity. Since JC14 named a few talented Ajax players that were on the way, I started to read some Ajax forums to follow them a bit and came across an interesting post the other day concerning this topic: Now whether he is exactly right on every detail or not, he described my point perfectly. A system that does not demand the most from players will automatically create inferior players compared to a system that does exactly that. We can go point towards Dutch kids playing Xbox, but that is an international phenomena. We can point at all kinds of things that make Spanish kids motorically more able, but to be honest they do pretty sh*t at the Olympics compared to the Netherlands. Netherlands first has to think about making the right choices in football itself to demand the right things from their footballers. We have dropped the ball.
Good post but I think a more direct approach does not exclude technical proficiency. The Dutch way of playing has been often more direct anyway (also in comparison with their contemporaries). It fits better with the physical capacities of the average Dutch athlete. I share the frustration about the effects of the Bosman ruling. Something else that pisses me off at these days of remembering the 25th anniversary of the 1988 win, is what followed after that. The 1990 disaster and also the 1992 fiasco, when there was really a realistic chance to win the tournament (Holland actually played better and the opposition was weaker as in 1988). That were two missed opportunities, esp. euro 1992.
You are so full of it. The Netherlands never wins anything. All of this business about Italy "not being very good" is just sour grapes from a supporter of a national team that, objectively, has won almost nothing in its history. Spain were better than Italy and they won, that's what counts. I could go on and wonder what the Italy A team with Balotelli, El Sharaway and De Sciglio would have done against Spain.
Reframing performances by placing them into a historical context rather then then looking at a teams intention, throwing in discussion muddling bombs like an NT's win/loss record and ad hominem/name calling remarks, plus purposefully misjudging my curiosity about the Dutch U21 A team ability vs Spain for unsportsmanlike behavior are all 4 excuses and cop outs methods to not talk about the game itself and analyse it in a fair and balanced matter. I tried to discuss the game with you, even making a screenshot with match stats, but rather then building an interesting dialogue you became defensive and began to attack the person behind the analyses like you are doing now again. I have to conclude that what you bring forward does not change my mind (again) and looking at the the initial reactions from others (I was actually not even the one making the original evaluation of Italy's quality, it were others in this thread that were saying Italy was not so good) more people where underwhelmed by Italy's performance. I tend to agree. Anyway, I am now done with the personal labels you like to throw into discussions to disrupt a good discourse and not have to admit you were wrong. I will ask a moderator to look at your post before you start to embarrass yourself further.
If I recall correctly three of the key players on the Milan that Sacchi put together were Gullit, van Basten, and Rijkaard. I wonder if they were born in Italy???? BTW, Wigglesworth is clearly a troll. Look at when he joined the forum, just the beginning of this month.
Well he certainly behaves like one with this last post. I expect somebody with Italian NT interest at heart to explain posters on an international forum how Mangia let's this U21 play more defensive than Ferrara, who followed the trend in Italy to play more attacking and positive football like Fiorentina and Roma and expand on this point. Not take offense when somebody does not agree on an equation he makes. Especially with a team that was arguably one of the best teams in history. Come to think about it, one could wonder who actually is defending Italy here.
Okay like DRB said personal insults aren't cool. I know I let people get away with them too often, but people who just show up in this forum to troll aren't welcome. Consider this your one warning Wigglesworth.