Between 1972 and 1992 either Germany or Holland featured in all but one European or World Cup final (1984 Euros). Since then they have featured in just two finals. What has led to this incredible decline? Why are Germany and Holland no longer feared by top teams? Are they failing to produce quality players any more? If so why? Is the end in sight for either nation? Germany appear to have made some progress, but given that that it was on home turf, how will they fare without home advantage?
Nothing has happened. Germany had two bad EUROs because of bad coaching and declining players, that happens now and then. France was horrid after winning two consecutive titles, Brazil wasn't all that impressive in the recent World Cup either. Now that Germany has better coaches and lots of young players coming up, they are back to where they belong, with the slight difference being that the other countries have made lots of progress in the past. There are simply way more good teams in this age then before. It's not like those two countries never had weak years in the period you mention, it just happened that both never had a weak tournament at the same time.
Ha! That's the spirit Comme, counter attack. Dutch professional club football is almost dead from an international perspective - we just can't keep up with the big money leagues in Europe anymore. Not that that worries me or bothers me much as in every other respect, Dutch football is thriving. Domestically, football both as a spectator and participation sport has never been more popular. The Dutch FA has never had more members, i.e. there's never been more people registered as active footballers, i.e. footballers who take part in an official Dutch FA amateur league. Football has risen up the ranks amongst women too and it's now the second most popular sport for girls and women after field hockey. And meanwhile the highest Dutch professional league is breaking attendance record upon attendance record and looks to continue to do so for quite a while as clubs keep on expanding stadium capacity and selling more season tickets. As for the future, our national youth teams have never performed better with our under 21s winning the two most recent European championships and competing in this summer's olympics for the first time. I fully agree that our national team's been rubbish but that's mostly down to our abysmal coaching staff. And despite being rubbish we still manage to qualify for the major tournaments. We will never have as many star players as the big football nations but that doesn't have to be a problem - it might in fact be an advantage in international football.
France have never really been a major power though in the past. They had a decent team in the 50s, a very good one in the 80s, and one at the end of the 90s. They have never been a consistently great team. Brazil had one bad tournament. They just won the Copa America without their two star players. Germany have only produced really two top (by which I mean top 50 or so in the world) players in the last ten years, Kahn and Ballack. Go back ten years more and you had the likes of Sammer, Matthaus, Klinsmann, Hassler, Moller. Go back a bit further and you have Rumminigge, Forster, Brehme, Kaltz, Stielike, further to Beckenbauer, Muller, Breitner, Maier. True, but neither side has had such a prolonged period of mediocrity for some time either. The Dutch are naturally more sporadic in the production of talent due to their smaller population, but they have also produced less top players in recent years.
The Dutch have traditionally produced top coaches though, at least since Michels. Also the production line of players does seem to have slowed down. In the 70s we had Cruyff, Neeskens, Krol, Suurbier, Van Hanegem, Rep, Rensenbrink, Keizer. In the 80s we had Gullit, Van Basten, Rijkaard, Van Breukelen, Koeman, Wouters, Van Aerle. These were all top class players. In the last 5-10 years have Holland produced as many? Possibly, but they haven't made anything of them. Is Van Basten entirely to blame?
What do you think is really wrong with Dutch football though? When everybody's fit, the Dutch starting XI features three key players from the Real Madrid squad, a key player from Arsenal, another from AC Milan, another couple from HSV, one from Celtic, a couple from Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord. How is that worse than in the past? The only thing that's changed is that the Dutch national team under Van Basten's leadership is that they haven't played attractive football. And over the past 10 years we still managed to reach two Euro champs semifinals and get past the group of death stage in a world cup. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's (a lot) better than most, including some of the world's top football nations. I'll be the first to agree with you that the football has looked rubbish under Van Basten's leadership but I don't see how you can atrribute this to anything being structurally wrong with Dutch football. The players you list are from two generations: the 1974 one and the 1988 one. The Dutch 1974 side was a once in a lifetime quality squad, we won't see that again in our lifetime. The Dutch then had a long dry spell without qualifying for tournaments until 1988 - we were MUCH less consistent in producing quality generations of football in those days than we are now. And people seem to forget that the 1988 side didn't have that many star players to start off with! Who outside of the Netherlands remembers our 1988 back four? Cracks me up that you list Van Aerle as a top class player btw. He'd be the first to admit that he wasn't! Again, money becoming an increasingly dominant factor in club football is making our top clubs less and less competitive in Europe. I'll gladly admit to that. Structurally though, Dutch football is sound.
Germany was just top 3 in two world cups in a row... They had two crappy world cups before that but i'm sure that has happened earlier too. Holland still has lots of quality players, they just don't win anything, so that's pretty much the same as it's always been.
You don't seem to be able to produce any good defenders any more. You've produced 2 good defenders in the last 20 years. Also you don't seem to have be able to find a settled forward line. There's no denying that Robben and RVN are top player, RVP a clear talent though not yet as good as the Dutch seem to think. How do you get the best out of them. He's the best Dutch right back of the last 20 years. Though in fairness that's not saying much. So was it simply that you over performed in previous years? Are we expecting too much of the Dutch?
The decline of the German NT and the Bundesliga in the years after 98 are due to the near criminal neglect the big German teams showed toward the social changes starting in the late 80s. The revolution in broadcasting combined with the advent of computer games brought new ways for entertainment. Instead of playing soccer the whole afternoon young boys tended to watch more and more tv or play video games. The league didn't need to adjust at once because they could rely von the FGRs golden generation of the late 80s, the influx of the outrunning GDR system and massive imports due to the bosman case. In 98 the nucleus of these generation finally started to disappear and league and NT lost more and more their competitiveness. Still the league needed the catastrophe of the euro 2000 to really reform the whole youth programme. The German teams of WC 2002 and EC 2004 were probably the worst of the last 50 years in term of pure talent. Klinsmann got lucky that the changes form the beginning of the century finally showed the first results in 2006. The number of young quality players in the league is quite surprising if you compare it to the late 90s.
While I agree that both countries are not as good as they were during the 20 years in question. I think that your example (teams in the finals) is somewhat misleading. One could state that between 1990 and now either Germany or France have featured in all but 2 finals (1994 and 2004). I think that Germany is on the rebound and I expect them to do well in both Euro2008 and WC2010. Holland is a tougher call, I think that they are a good team and would love to see them return to the glory days of the 70s (both clubs and country). However, the club teams are not as good as they used to be (compared to the rest of UEFA) and due to probably financial reasons this not likely to change. Yes, I know that the club to country relationship is not a automatic one. I tend to believe that there is a strong correlation between the direction of club teams (up and down vs. other UEFA club teams) and the direction of the national team If that is true, then Germany is on the rebound, while Holland still has to wait..
Again you're contradicting yourself. On the one hand you argue that we no longer produce good defenders, then you go on to argue that we've never produced many good defenders. What is your point? Defending's never been our main strength, nothing's changed there. This just proves to me that you haven't watched many Holland games. The reason for the Dutch rating Van Persie so highly is that he's been pure genius for Holland so it seems that we're getting more out of Van Persie than Arsenal are. People generally seem to have a unique set of standards for the Dutch national football team. When the Dutch play attacking, entertaining football and don't win a tournament, they're accused of playing unrealistic football and of bad defending. When the Dutch play defensive, realistic football, they're accused of being awful to watch. The world seems to want to keep Dutch football in their comfort zone: they want the role of Dutch football to be the entertainer that never actually wins things. Whenever Dutch football steps out of this comfort zone, it pisses people off. The situation currently is that people (not just you) feel that there's not enough star players in the Holland squad and that they've been rubbish of late. The irony being that if Holland fail to get out of the group of death and get through to the second round at Euro 2008, they'll be accused of underachieving. So make up your mind already. If you believe we're rubbish, then don't expect us to do well at a tournament, and don't call us underachievers if we fail to do well. What annoys me about all of this is that people are quick to form an opinion about Dutch football, but that opinion is very rarely based on actual know-how or recent information. Instead it's all based on prejudice and on past performances. It would be nice for a change if our national football team was to be properly analysed by the international media, or if people would just be honest and said: we don't know enough about the current generation of Dutch players to comment.
That's pretty much exactly what happened in Germany... Of course, the reason for the lack of talent in the late 90s is open to interpretation, but when you see that some of the best German field players of that generation - Schneider, Klose, Ballack - started getting really good pretty late in their career, it seems likely that the youth development was really bad at that time. Right now, we definitely have more promising under-24 players than we had since at least the late 80s, so the situation is improving, even if my hopes for the upcoming Euro are getting lower due to injuries. Regarding Holland, I think you can't really call it a decline... they might not have been in a final for 20 years, but they have been in the semis 1998, 2000 and 2004, everytime getting kicked out in penalty shoot out, so not seeing a final has clearly a lot to do with bad luck. Especially in 1998 the team played great, entertaining football, and with players like Bergkamp, de Boer Kluivert, Davids, Seedorf, van Nistelrooy they did always have some of the big names in the last years, with guys like Sneijder, van der Vaart, van Persie they currently have some of the best young players. So, I really don't see where Holland has been any worse than before in the last 15 years, especially if you see that apart from the finals in 1974, 1978, 1988 they mostly failed to qualify for big tournaments before 1990, while except for 2002 they always not only participated, but at least reached the second round since 1990.
Nothing much has changed except other nations. Other nations are getting stronger thanks to football becoming more and more of a global sport. It's not that nations are in decline, it's just that others are catching up.
I agree with this. The Dutch system and Ajax academy did such an incredible job of developing players, and IDEAS, that the Dutch were able to excel through superior preparation. Now everyone has such academies, so their advantage has eroded. I always thought that for the US to succeed, we should just buy the Ajax Academy and move the whole thing to Florida via giant helicopters. Seriously, if the academy/preparation field has been evened (think about the French Clairfontaine academy), the Dutch are then at a severe disadvantage due to population. Then furthermore, even all the great Dutch ideas have been co-opted by everyone else. I love Dutch soccer and have faith that they will develop new ideas to get back on top.
You are clearly wrong there with Germany... the 90s nt was almost entirely dominated by the world champions, hardly any new notable players came up until Matthäus finally stepped down. Just try to find German stars that came in the 90s and are not goalkeepers - Bierhoff, Ziege, Jeremies, Hamann, Bobic, Scholl, Wörns, Linke - some decent players, but compared to the 70s and 80s, it was really a huge step back. The only world class field players that were not world champions 1990 were Sammer, who already played GDR nt in the late 80s and Effenberg, who was never any good in the nt. The situation is slowly getting better since the turn of the century, though. The 3rd place in 2006 was already much less of a miracle than the final 4 years before.
Ajax has been struggling of late which is why it cracks me up that people like you believe that Dutch football is all about Ajax. There might be something wrong with Ajax youth development, but the fact that the Dutch national under 21 side won the under 21 European championships in 2006 AND in 2007 should tell you that there's absolutely nothing wrong with youth development in the Netherlands overall. Our national youth teams are doing better than ever before in the history of Dutch football, in fact. So we're still producing plenty of talent. The fact that foreign television shows only Ajax gives you a warped view of Dutch football. Watch the Dutch olympic side in Beijing in the summer and learn about young talent like Amrabat (VVV), Zuiverloon (Heerenveen), Aisatti (PSV), Elia (Twente) and Velthuizen (Vitesse) and you will understand what I mean. Again our traditional top three in club football are struggling to compete in Europe but that's mostly down to financial reasons as we all know. In terms of youth development and national team(s), there's nothing wrong with Dutch football.
Germany was just top 3 in two world cups in a row... They had two crappy world cups before that but i'm sure that has happened earlier too. Holland still has lots of quality players, they just don't win anything, so that's pretty much the same as it's always been.
Van Gaal only ever coached one national team (Holland) and he failed to qualify for the 2002 world cup with us so I don't know what you're on about. It's not Ajax but PSV that has kept Dutch club football alive in Europe for a number of years now and they deserve respect for it. By the way, the only prize Holland ever won, Euro 88, was in no small part thanks to the core of PSV players that also won the European cup that year.
1) You're right -my mistake- Hiddink (PSV) coached the 1996 Dutch team with all the Ajax players, then Korea and Australia. I agree that PSV has been more influential of late (thank god DeMarcus Beasley went there). 2) You have to give 1990's Ajax alot of credit; when PSV wins the CL (they came close) maybe the Ajax lore will be buried. But again Ajax, with the creation of things like Ajax Cape Town, is being very creative with African and other international players -which may or may not benefit Dutch soccer- but it sure is imaginative, and represents efforts and ideas way beyond most other teams. I love the Ajax minset being extended into new places.
Of course I give Ajax credit. But for the past, not for the present. The only Ajax youth development players in their starting XI currently are the goalkeeper, the central defender and the left back (who doesn't even play every week). Oh and I forgot, old man Davids who's a liability but that's another discussion. Whenever Ajax need a new player these days they look at what's available at other Dutch clubs rather than at what talent's available at their own youth academy. None of the players that have come in to replace the likes of Babel and Sneijder are products of the Ajax youth academy. Another example: they recently sold 23-year old Ajax product and midfielder Maduro to Valencia and bought a 32-year old Danish midfielder (Perez) from PSV. That's current Ajax policy for you. Don't take my word for it, ask any match-going Ajax fan as they're extremely ticked off with their management board. As for your belief that Ajax play the most attractive football - that's outdated too. I could give you a hundred links to Dutch news stories commenting on the fact that it's no longer the conventional top three (including Ajax) that play the most attractive football in the league. It's other Dutch clubs that get all the praise these days for innovative attacking play.
Neeskens- there can be no Davids bashing on this thread! Your points are well taken and you clearly know what you're taking about. Romance dies hard. That new stadium must have made Ajax management wacky.
You used to produce at least decent defenders, not that many world class ones but at least some good ones. You're using Mario Melchiot now. Genius against who? You haven't played any good teams recently. It’s not just Holland. People say just the same about Brazil, and to an extent England. Big teams with some history of success and/or attacking play. Do you not see your own hypocrisy here? In the numerous threads about England, most people are saying that a) England are rubbish now b) England are underperforming and should do better. This should win an award for unintentional comedy. Mr Pot meet Mr Kettle. The Dutch are perhaps the most opinionated people in the world. Or maybe its just you.