Yeah I agree Actually Depay can be compared to Narsingh and Elia, they definitly show pace without the ball, on runs, when they have the space for. But with the ball they aren't that fast. They can push it in one touch and run like Depay did vs France for example, but they don't have speed when controlling the ball. That's why I don't really believe Depay would make a good 10. He is more hybrid than Elia and Narsingh, better passing, but his ball control isn't that good for me. Afellay has that speed in my opinion. He can go fast with doing many touchs . He is really hard to follow, I would like to see a statistic showing how many fouls he provoks per game. He accelerates a bit like an american footballer, doing many body feints etc. you never know if he will stop or keep running. The two moments from 04:15. That's two typical Afellay moments, and that's what I love. Some people may argue calling that "headless chicken" but when you look at 04:25, what better can a midfielder do ? Getting past 5 players and giving a perfect pass for VDV to score (he actually failed). It was even not a counter situation, he just cut their lines with few touchs. Using his pace and ball control. When he starts to run like that, the best thing for the opponent is to make a foul. I want to see that more often in dutch football. I believe Afellay is not a player who would let the back passing being eternal, for sure he will try to change the tempo and bring pace.
I value quickness over speed any day of the week. Look at Messi, he's not the fastest player on the pitch but he is the quickest (and he has just superb on ball skills).
FIFA stats are a joke. Every year you get the newest game to get the most up to date rosters and player qualities, but what is the point when they never get them right anyways? Also, Vlaar is given a 61 rating for speed when he should be one of the fastest players. I have seen him out run Gareth Bale, who is rated as the 7th fastest player at 94
My boy Sinkgraven. He will be at Ajax sooner than later, but we will enjoy him while he lasts. What a breakout for him this season will be. Heerenveen at the top of the table!! I've always believed in Klassen's potential to be an impact player. People forget often just how young he is.
As long as Feyenoord have the El Ahmadi-Clasie axis in check, there is no reason why Feyenoord can not win from any opponent. The Kongolo - van Beek partnership so far has only conceded 6 goals. Least number of goals in the league. Of course defending is something you do with the whole team, but I believe that playing Kongolo over Mathijsen was an important step to get defense in check. Had Feyenoord not lost so many points at the start of the season, they would have been a clear title candidate. Their luck is that they play in Eredivisie. Anything is still possible.
If Kazim reachs 10 goals this season, we definitly can put Eredivisie amongst the worse leagues in europe.
^nonsense. 1) We play attacking football in the Netherlands which allows strikers to score plenty of goals. 2) He plays for one of the biggest clubs in the league as a central striker. 3) He's not a bad player. Following your rationale the French league is much worse than the Eredivisie because Cvitanich scored way more goals over there.
Sinkgraven with another good performance though Heerenveen ended up collapsing and losing. It's too bad but I think that it is fair. They are not going to be at the top all year especially after losing 3 of their 4 best players. Sinkgraven isn't far behind, either.
Cvitanich started 30 games with Ajax and scored 13 goals which is not good but not terrible. He did better in Nice but yeah, that's probably one of the few exceptions that you'll find. Kazim never scored 5 goals in any league, Ogbeche is already at 5 goals with Cambuur while he only could more one season in spanish 2nd division, Guidetti scored 20 with Feyenoord and I really really doubt he will get anything close in other leagues, Altidore scored 38 in two seasons, go to see his stats in Turkey, Spain, England...He never scored 3 goals there. Without to mention Dost and L.De Jong. That's not because the league is playing attack but simply because the tactical level and defences are really poor. Actually if you want to compare to France, Van la Parra said himself that he really had problems in France cause defenders were a way more disciplined. Bony is the only one striker that was really good since Suarez, I also doubt about Pelle. He is not starting bad but I don't think he is that good.
Interesting article that kind of substantiates my feeling of Feyenoord being a force: The Good/Lucky Matrix
So Feyenoord is on around an ExpG ratio of .75. A title win demands at least 0.65 states the author. Vitesse and PSV come close to that. Feyenoord is the only team that exceeds that number easily. On another note, look at the luck of Heracles. Lol.
One could also give credit to Eredivisie when it takes shit in and is able to throw bronze or silver out. Altidore came at Eredivisie and towards the end he also became a factor for the USA team. Not in EPL, but quite some Americans saw games of him in the NT at the end of his AZ spell that made them rate the player. He added value to their team. Pelle was a bench sitter at Parma IIRC. Whether he will dip in the future or not, the fact he scored a goal like the one recently in a tough league and made the Italian NT selection really indicates that Eredivisie has been good for him. I am also curious why you are so sure that the higher goal ratio can exclusively be explained by poor tactics and defenses and not to an attacking style of play. Quite some lower teams in the Netherlands do play quite attacking. Vitesse under Bosz. Feyenoord plays now quite attacking. PSV more counter football. I have followed the average goal ratio of Eredivisie compared to other leagues for quite some time and it is always among the highest. Year after year. It is just a trait of the league. Van Gaal has worked in some leagues now and rates the tactical side of Eredivisie as quite high. When we played Italy he even argued that for that dimension the leagues were equal. Why do you think Eredivisie is so poor tactically compared to other leagues? The main problem now is age. The Eredivisie is just ridiculously young. Internationally this suicide. Someway or somehow the teams need to add some experienced blokes in the squad. An older player like Kazim scores more as he is older. That he finally plays striker on a consistent basis rather than being deployed to the sides helps also.
I like Altidore as player, very physical and hard to defend on. But he always have been a very poor finisher, even with USA NT, he got this reputation. And in Eredivisie the guy was scoring at almost every game. Kazim also got this very bad finisher reputation, Ogbeche also had it with PSG...Castaignos is also a very bad finisher. All those players are able to score in Eredivisie cause they get 10 chances per game. You may call that "attacking football", for me it's more crap defending. In every PSV-Ajax, Feyenoord-Ajax or whatever, you see big amateur mistakes. Just remember how PSV gave the title to Ajax two years ago with that gross Pieters mistake. In a crucial game for the title, you see defenders losing the ball just in front of their box, sliding etc. Those things happen less often in big leagues. And I don't even talk about the little eredivisie team which are able to take three goals in the first 20 minutes. Actually I think that it's harder to score in Turkey, Ukraine or Greece than in Holland. Lens had to divide his goal ratio per two last year with Dynamo. If dutch teams were able to keep a high ratio in european competitions, I would believe that the ratio is high because dutch football is very attacking, but that's really not the case.
One of the principal reasons Altidore was in the US NT was the horrific traffic accident that Charlie Davies was in prior to the 2010 WC. Davies was a wonderful striker with speed and strength and in the 2009 Confederations Cup in South America had a great tournament. IIRC he was injured and almost lost his life in early 2010.
It is certainly a combination of attacking football and mediocre defending, hard to tell the ratio though
Towards the end of his AZ spell he started to become more prolific for country. I felt that his development in Eredivisie was transcending to the NT. When moving to EPL his confidence got kicked down again and now he is obviously at a bad spot. This is what I said about Altidore when some Americans were getting carried away by the numbers he put on the board in the Netherlands: Link It is good to recall that Altidore did not start out that well and was even benched for a player like Benschop. I feel that his spell in Eredivisie did pay out for country, not for the next step in another league like EPL though. They are bad finishers, I even consider myself as one of the main opponents of a Castaignos. You are the one who wants him selected for the NT, not me . Castaignos was not even impressive in Eredivisie, but is now catered so much towards ( a general trait for Eredivisie, catering towards the striker) that he does better than previously. Also we have seen Kazim already miss gigantic chances, like the one vs Ajax where he shakes off Moisander and then just put it to the right of the goal rather than in the net. However an important detail in this assessment is that Kazim did not play striker at many clubs. Now he does and will get more chances. This is where we differ. It's not "or" for me. It is both. It is bad defending ánd attacking football. Also one is related to the other, which I will touch on in the next bit. This can be said of games in every league. Go watch Manchester United vs Dons and pay attention to Evans. Milan vs Parma, the 4-5. Look at the last Parma goal from a back pass from De Scilio IIRC. Again, there is a lot of bad defending in Eredivisie, I just disagree with the notion that the high scoring ratio can exclusively be explained by bad defending and tactics alone. It is also part of the Dutch nature to display attacking football. A club like Dortdrecht who have an agreement with the coach to only play attacking football even if that means relegating is not something you see in many country's. Them conceding goals they would not have in case they had played more defensively can be explained as poor tactics, but it is also a choice. Eredivisie has one of the highest stadium occupation rates in Europe. The total numbers are close to that of France, which has a much bigger population. The people that go to the stadium bring money in and want to be entertained. Then we can have a debate whether some awful defending is fun to look at, but many people do come to the stadium and there are also good games of these small teams that show good football for the level of players they have. Look at a Cambuur now. Also play football and the fans love their club for the way they play the game. FC Zwolle did not park the buss in the Arena, but pressed Ajax once again. Got them a point. To play this football, defenders are selected for the capability to play along and take care of build up. That can mean that there are defenders like Gouweleeuw, who are good on ball, but bad in manhandling and intervening. However that is a choice. You don't acknowledge that there is also a certain amount of choosing going on for a certain direction people want to go to. That is where we differ. Possibly, I don't really follow these leagues, but the point that not only Eredivisie top scorers flop in better leagues, they also flop in worse leagues is one that I made a long time ago. Like that NEC striker not making it in Belgium when he returned. We see better defending also in lower rated leagues. Both quality and a choice. What I will say though is that these nations have not produced a Krol, Koeman and F de Boer. There is also a flip side to what they do. Let's not lose track of that. Also last WC, the Eredivisie kids at the back were able to execute a game plan that lead to conceding very few goals per minutes they played (Netherlands did not only play 7 games, also had 2 games going into extra time). A whopping 4 goals, including 2 bullsh*t penalty's. This does not take into account the age differences and just general quality differences in Europe that has become bigger over the years. A league can have an attacking nature compared to others while that not transcending to numbers when confronted to better opposition. Few teams dare to press Barca like Ajax did last season and they were rewarded with a win. We do not disagree on bad defending going on in Eredivisie, I just don't like the one way explenation things are given. Kazim scoring more than 10 goals = Eredivisie one of the worst leagues in Europe. We have to make a distinction between how much comes down to bad defending (a lot) and how much comes down due to the character of the league, which is an expression of the Dutch nature. Many decades ago Netherlands was late to adopt the WM system since it was considered as too defensive. People wanted to see attacking free flowing football. The football displayed is also there to entertain the people and despite the poor quality these days, the stadium occupation rates are still among the highest. Cheers
I don't argue about dutch football being attacking actually, it's indeed a balance between an attacking style and bad defences. But there is no pride to have an attacking football if the general level of the league is poor. I don't like the back passing, but I also don't like the circus games in Holland that would finish at 6-2 with 5 big mistakes made by defenders, a mediocre player scoring an hattrick etc. Those games completly discredit the league. And there are at least 3 per weekend. Not necessarly the little teams. I saw many Ajax-PSV that looked like circus last years. Just take a look at last weekend : Vitesse 6 - 1 ADO Den Haag Heracles 6 - 1 NAC Breda Cambuur 4 - 1 FC Dordrecht Willem II 2 - 1 SC Heerenveen FC Utrecht 2 - 3 Go Ahead Eagles PSV Eindhoven 3 - 0 Excelsior AZ Alkmaar 2 - 2 FC Twente Feyenoord 4 - 0 FC Groningen Ajax 0 - 0 PEC Zwolle It's crazy that Heracles beat 6-1 NAC, Cambuur 4-1 Dordrecht, Vitesse 6-1 ADO, the gap between those teams isn't big (Vitesse is weak this year), games should be more closed and balanced. How can it be so ? Do you see many 6-1 in games between sub english teams ?
The EPL has 14 relegation candidates each year. Given the massive difference in TV revenue between the EPL and the Championship no team can afford to be relegated. It leads to risk averse and extremely defensive football. It's very rare to see a team there play positive football although Swansea and Southampton have been exceptions in recent years. It's very telling that a coach like Moyes who was quite succesfull at Everton had no idea how to organize an attack at Man United last year. He basically had the team dug in and hoof the ball up front hoping an attacker would have a moment of brilliance. I'm not surprised that both Koeman and Van Gaal have their teams play very good football. One thing we have in common with English teams is that our domestic style isn't very effective in international cup tournaments. We really need our coaches to be a little less naive in those matches. I think AZ has shown that when Dutch teams play more defensively in Europe they can do quite well.
I really don't see the point in this argument. Yes we are not as good as England (though Ajax have favorable results vs the top of the EPL in recent years regardless). And no, Kazim scoring 10 goals in our league does not prove we have one of the weakest leagues in Europe. We are actually #9 out of 54.
The fact that PSV is the best Eredivisie side says a lot about the Eredivisie. Watch them get destroyed by a Salzburg-type of club. Man that defending!!! Horrendous. It's not that the attackers are of Messi quality, no it's that the defenders are horrible. And what does AZ have with South American keepers that suck? And besides the defending, why do they play so naive? Actually most Dutch sides play this way, even in Europe where it just suicide to play this way.
Did not really see the game, except some snippets, but my impression was that he did not have the biggest influence on the match. People are free to come in a share their view.