Oranje just not good enough anymore. despite reaching the semi's they have shown very little were was Robben today Vd Vaart, I know he came on as a sub because they announced it, if it wasn't for that would have never know he was on the pitch Seedorf, is he slow because his teammates are not open or does he just like to take his time? I would say a combination of the two. Long balls to our 3 forwards only work if you have players that can actually pick out one of the 3, against Portugal we did not have that kind of player as Portugal got every ball. what made this game somewhat interesting was that after the Portugeuse scored in their own goals, they lost their composure yet we still really never threatened...I don't even recall any shots that reached their keeper. We are now just too slow personally and as a team and in general not good enough to compete with the better nations. Time to retire for a handful of people and give the younger generation a chance to develop. With the exeption of Robben(exept today) the youngster don't appear to be quite ready yet so I am not expecting anything from Holland for the next 5 years or so disappointed for sure but not surprised as this was a team that did not qualify for the last World cup, needed 2 play off games against Schotland to qualify for Euro2004 and only moved on due to an even worse Germany team. Only good thing was we finally won on pk's I'd rather see us play nice and lose that sit through the crappy games the Dutch have been involved in lately..problem is I don't think they can play voetbal the way it should be played exept for a few minutes here and there....not this team anyway.
Well Robben was the only youngster to start today (unless you count Bouma), and Van der Vaart was the only one to join him. So I wouldn't say they're not ready to handle the pressure just yet. But yes you're right. It's time to retire a number of players and bring forth a new generation of dutch players based around Robben, Van der Vaart, Sneijder, Heitinga, De Jong, and yes, maybe even van Persie or de Ridder. I had hoped some of these players could start taking on this mantle during this tournament, but Dick's lack of confidence destroyed that. No matter, the team did themselves fairly proud (or at least they didn't embarass themselves), which is about as much as we all could've asked for in the leadup to the tournament. I do think we could have really challenged for this thing, but in the end Co Adriaanse was right. Advocaat is too conservative to win a trophy like this.