If
you had assumed that the Netherlands would just always be good at
soccer, this was an understandable leap in logic to make. After all, the
Dutch had been good for so long – pretty much continuously since the
early 1970s – that it seemed a given, in spite of sourcing their
national team from a population that only recently reached 17 million.
If
you had assumed that the Netherlands would just always be good at
soccer, this was an understandable leap in logic to make. After all, the
Dutch had been good for so long – pretty much continuously since the
early 1970s – that it seemed a given, in spite of sourcing their
national team from a population that only recently reached 17 million.
But as the noted analytics maven Michael Caley
points out, what’s actually noteworthy isn’t that the Dutch are now no
longer good. What’s remarkable is that they didn’t turn bad sooner.
And
for the record, they are now bad. While Oranje reached the semifinals
of the World Cup for a second time in a row in 2014 – placing third in
Brazil, four years after coming second in South Africa – things have
spiraled hopelessly out of control since. Manager Louis van Gaal, the
architect of the World Cup success with a tactical scheme that masked
the issues of a lopsided team – brilliant in the attack; full of
liabilities in defense – left for Manchester United and was succeeded by
Guus Hiddink, an inspirational coach but famously a tactical
lightweight.
Under
Hiddink, the Dutch made a halting 3-2-1 (W-L-T) start to Euro 2016
qualifying before the veteran manager was fired. His successor, Danny
Blind, has somehow had a 12-year run as either head coach or assistant
manager of his old club and the national team, without ever
demonstrating any particular aptitude for it. The Netherlands missed the
Euros under him – even though it was expanded from 16 to 24 teams —
coming fourth in a six-team group, behind Iceland, the Czech Republic
and Turkey, respectively.
Blind
was allowed to stay on, for some reason, and the side kept on
stumbling, getting off to a 2-2-1 start to World Cup qualifying. The
Dutch again sit in fourth place, below France, Sweden and Bulgaria – who
comfortably won 2-0 at home against the three-time World Cup runners-up
on Friday. Blind was fired on Sunday.
But
while there are five more qualifiers to play, it already feels like
it’s too late to recover and make it to Russia next summer. The play has
been so poor that it simply seems unrealistic to climb above Sweden and
even Bulgaria – which hasn’t been to a World Cup since 1998 – a
sentiment only confirmed by the sad display in Tuesday’s 2-1 friendly
loss to Italy, which isn’t exactly a world superpower at the moment
either.
Just
as problematically, there is no apparently good choice to replace Blind
– who was appointed not just to assist Hiddink in 2014, but to succeed
him after the Euros, a succession plan that looks ridiculously premature
and hubristic in retrospect. The two best Dutch managers currently out
there aren’t interested. Ronald Koeman wanted the job in 2014 but was
only offered Blind’s assistant-successor arrangement. He turned it down
and has since thrived with Southampton and Everton in the Premier
League. Frank de Boer wants to make amends on the club level after
flaming out with Inter Milan, following a wildly successful spell at
Ajax.
Louis
van Gaal has demurred on a return – he’d rather run the entire
federation instead. Which leaves the 69-year-old Dick Advocaat as the
least uninspired of the Dutch options, although neither of his two
previous spells as Holland manager lived up to expectations – a
quarterfinal finish at the ’94 World Cup and a semifinal berth at Euro
’04, when more was expected.
Alternatively,
the country that once consistently produced some of the best managers
in the sport would have to go with a foreigner – in itself an indictment
on the state of the Dutch game.
Either way, the material at the new boss’s disposal is limited in every
line. And this is the crux of the problem. The golden generation that
played from Euro ’96 through the 2006 World Cup was succeeded by the
foursome of Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben, Wesley Sneijder and Rafael van der Vaart, whose transcendent attacking talents compensated for the dearth of decent defenders.
