I don't think he's our most talented teenager, but he's pretty damn talented. I just don't like it when other Dutch people post crap, because before you know it I post crap too.
I've got another one: young Belgium and AZ player Mousa Dembele. Bound to be snapped up by a really big side in a couple of years.
If Bayern Munich often play in the BL with Schweinsteiger, Piggy can be one of the best. also poldi. cheers Rich
Am I to conclude that you reserve judgement on Dutch teenagers who play in our domestic league until they move abroad and end up in the first team of the Chelseas and Barcelona's of this world? If that's your take on football, I hope you don't spend money on a Dutch season ticket.
Not at all (though ofcourse this is going to become an endless argument again), but it's just way too obvious that our league hasn't really gotten better, say, the last ten years. Actually, it has gotten much worse.
That's a money issue, the other smaller leagues are suffering too. We just don't have the population size that attracts big sponsors. Fact is though that interest from the fans in the Dutch league has been and still is on the increase. Last season was another all-time attendance record and clubs keep expanding stadium capacity. So I wonder where all this negativity about the Dutch league comes from.
Money is the major issue. But I also think the current crop of Dutch player isn't as good as their predecessors. Where are the Cruijffs, Neeskens, Gullits, Van Bastens, Rijkaards, etc.? Hell, I don't even think the current group can match the De Boers, Overmars, Bergkamps, Seedorfs, Kluiverts, and Davids.
Germany have seven times more active footballers than Holland, England five times I think. How many times does an excellent generation of footballers come round in Germany or England, and in all of them other countries that have both a strong football culture and a significantly larger population size than Holland's? Somehow people (including Dutch people like Bertje) hold Dutch football up to a different set of standards than other football nations, and that's not fair. If you look at this objectively, the Dutch have done and still are doing better than most football nations. We've lost one out of our 19 last competitive matches despite being in a difficult world cup qualifying and world cup proper group, and I'm willing to bet that that's in the top three of the best runs in Europe at the moment. You don't think we have any stars - well, up until a month ago, no-one outside Holland rated Kuyt, yet now that he's playing for Liverpool, they do. Just because a number of our NT footballers play in our domestic league doesn't mean they're no good. Not that I think we've our best generation ever - we don't. But it's unfair to compare each generation of Dutch footballers to the 1974 one, that much class in one generation only comes round every 50 years or so. When Bertje talks about the failure of Dutch youth development, he's clearly talking about Ajax's failure to produce much talent of late. In general our youth development is doing fine, as evidenced by our youngsters winning the most recent European under 21 championships, our under 17s reaching their world cup semifinal, and our under 19s reaching their European semi-finals.
What on earth are you talking about. When you look at the performance of our national youth teams over the past three years, they've done better than any generation in the entire history of Dutch football. So when you say 'our famed youth program' it would be more accurate to say 'the Ajax youth program'.
The Dutch youth program and the Ajax one in particular, because it was even better than the rest. We just don't produce the real class anymore. Who cares about a U21 win?
I don't think so. It's not so famed I think because everyone else has caught up to the Ajax way because money is now focused on the G14+ other bigger clubs and clubs like Hertha have to make great youth teams.
Then why are they players we bring up these days not up to the standards of the players we used to develope?
So Robben, Van Persie, Kuyt, Van der Sar, Van der Vaart, and Huntelaar are not real class, is that what you're saying? Aisatti, Schaars, Affelay etc aren't great talents? I mean, honestly. Meanwhile there's more proof of the obvious failure of our youth development scheme: the Holland under 17s just won a tournament in Germany, subsequently beating Germany, Italy, and Qatar. This of course is meaningless to you, and not at all an indication of how good our youth development is but what I'd like to ask is: how DO you rate the quality of our youth development if competitive games agains their peers don't count and if playing for Chelsea or Arsenal in your early 20s or playing a class game in the champions league mean nothing, and when IS a player a class player in your view? And if the players I listed above aren't real class, could you please tell Mr Wenger and Mr Mourinho along with the rest of us what is, in your view, real class? As I'm sure they'll immediately sell on their Dutch players now that you've deemed them useless.
Because it is statistically impossible for a small country to consistently produce great talent. We had a LONG spell of not qualifying for any tournaments in the 1980s. We were pretty rubbish in the mid 1990s. You seem to have completely forgotten that. I'd also like to know what you compare this generation of players with. It is not fair to compare them to Cruyff and Van Basten, I'm sure you'll agree.
First of all, Van der Sar doesn't belong in that list. Second of all, the problem isn't really with the Robbens, Persies and Aisatti's, but more with the De Jongs, Schaars' etc. We have never been the toughest around, but now we aren't most skilled anymore either.
Yet in the 1980s we produced Van Basten, Rijkaard, Gullit, Vanenburg, Koeman and Wouters, Kieft, Winter and Bergkamp. In the 1990s we produced the de Boers, Kluivert, Seedorf, Davids, Cocu, Van der Sar, Overmars and Stam.