The Official Euro 2012 Thread

[Kowalczyk]

Let's have a special thread for Euro 2012. Starts next week: June 8th!

K.

[souras84]

Should we start by our predictions? Group winners, top scorer, Winner? Whatever we like

[rjf1]

Based on the way they played last night, they might not make it out of the group stage -- slow, boring, useless, pitty pat, football.

[ajaxcolombia]

Van Marwijk has no idea of what to do with this team. He chose an incredibly one dimensional double pivot midfield, instead of more dynamic players like Anita and Jordy Clasie that can keep the ball moving and have strong positional sense, not just tacklers like Van Bommel and De Jong. He doesn't know either what to do with Huntelaar or Van Persie. And now, Joris Mathijsen is injured, and his backup is Wilfred Bouma...enough said.

[souras84]

Could there be an upset this summer? It seems as if the big teams haven't got enough fuel left...

[Venezuelan Ajacied]

Based on the way they played last night, they might not make it out of the group stage -- slow, boring, useless, pitty pat, football.

Yesterday, the group of death looked more like the group of shit.

Bulgaria 2-1 Netherlands
Switzerland 5-3 Germany
Brazil 3-1 Denmark
FYR Macedonia 0-0 Portugal

Somethings has to give, right ?

[afcajax73]

I think the friendlies have little bearing on what will happen to be honest, the squads have just come from a long season, first game back together, and some dissapointing results for the germans too.. the tournament its self will tell. :)

[Orange14]

Big problem is that BvM didn't experiment enough with alternative players. He's not caught in a trap of his own making as injuries have decimated his back line on the left side. He's going to have to start an unproven left back (Willens) who has been spotty in both club and NT and if Joris misses the tournament with the hamstring problem he picked up against Bulgaria it further complicates things. I didn't see the match the other day as we were on holiday in Italy and they were broadcasting the Giro d'Italia (I probably wouldn't have watched it any way since we were having so much fun doing other things). The other key issue is his player selection and formation. I think the 4-2-3-1 is bad negative football for the players he has. van Bommel is on his last legs and de Jong was only a part timer at ManCity (though he did have one of the highest pass completion rates in the EPL this season). There is no position for van der Vaart as he really only works well as a withdrawn forward behind the striker these days since he's lost speed and quickness. My gut feeling is that the team goes as far as Sneijder can take it and they will have to outscore opponents because of the defensive liabilities.

I suspect they have a good chance at making it out of the group as Germany have just as big problems on defense as the Dutch, Portugal always disappoint, and Denmark don't have a lot of depth. Should prove to be quite interesting.

[Kowalczyk]

Holland will suck big time and crash out in the first round.

Fortunately, this tournament is not just about Holland.

Germany the favourites, in my book.

K.

[rjf1]

Any resemblance between the unimaginative strategy and tactics vM is using for this team and the fooball we normally associate with a Dutch team is purely coincidental.

[souras84]

Any resemblance between the unimaginative strategy and tactics vM is using for this team and the fooball we normally associate with a Dutch team is purely coincidental.

[Tom_]

Holland will suck big time and crash out in the first round.

Fortunately, this tournament is not just about Holland.

Germany the favourites, in my book.

K.

Haha, I think so too. Wild guess: Holland third in the group, van Marwijk to resign/be sacked.

[souras84]

Well, in that case I hope it's the Danes that go through and not Portugal. If Portugal had a Hunter type striker, they could have won the Euro

[kezme44]

dutch defense, very weak

[bryan]

Yep, I think BvM plays the way he does because it's the only way you can play with such a weak defence. It's all very well playing attacking football when you have strong defenders at the back who can hoover everything up, like Stam and De Boer in the previous generation. But Holland's current best defender is Joris Mathijssen. And he's just not very good. And even he is injured now.

Try to play attacking football with this team and yes, you will get some goals, but that defence will get murdered on every counter attack. That's what happened under Van Basten. They had some fun against Italy and France in 2008, but then Russia figured out what to do and created chance after chance after chance. That it only ended 2-1 for Russia is a miracle.

I think Van Marwijk gets too much stick to be honest, he has chosen the correct system to shield the weak back line he has at his disposal.

The problem is that the Dutch football myth created by the national/Cruijff media concentrates only on attacking footballers and forgets all the great Dutch defenders of decades gone by. So there is a generation of young players in Holland who think defending is just not cool. Even all the best recent Ajax defenders have come from Belgium. Just imagine: Vermaelen, Vertonghen, Alderweireld and Kompany could all start ahead of the current Dutch defence. And when in history has that ever been the case?

[ajaxcolombia]

In my opinion, Joris Mathijsen was the best dutch player in south africa.

[Orange14]

Heitinga was selected player of the year for Everton and was a standout defender in the EPL (I watched a number of EPL games and he was a rock). Mathijssen is not the best central defender and has had a history of injury problems the past 18 months. The Russia game in the 2008 Euros was complicated because of the death of Bouhlarouz's daughter which happened just before the match. Maybe it was contributory, maybe not but the fact is that game could have gone either way for a long stretch. BvM continued to play the 4-2-3-1 because all of the other teams were playing it and right now he really doesn't have the right personnel to do it well. The key player that they were protecting in the WC last go around was Gio van Bronckhorst who was on his last legs as an NT player at left back.

Who are the "great" Dutch defenders besides Jaap Stam? FdB was decent but not a world class defender. If you go back to the Dutch NTs of the 1970s they had decent but not world class defenders in back. You need to adopt to the players that are available and BvM's biggest failing was not recognizing that he would have some holes to fill for this Euro and he didn't make much of an effort thorough the latter stages of qualifying and the friendlies to identify those players.

[Kowalczyk]

Who are the "great" Dutch defenders besides Jaap Stam? FdB was decent but not a world class defender. If you go back to the Dutch NTs of the 1970s they had decent but not world class defenders in back. You need to adopt to the players that are available and BvM's biggest failing was not recognizing that he would have some holes to fill for this Euro and he didn't make much of an effort thorough the latter stages of qualifying and the friendlies to identify those players.

Hmmm, I don't know. I would say Ajax's 1995 defense (Blind - Rijkaard - Frank de Boer, with Reiziger as the weakest, but pretty useful link) was world class. Danny Blind was as good as Franco Baresi, I'd say.

As for Holland '74: Ruud Krol was definitely world class. He was a star. Arie Haan also, to a lesser extent.

Right now it's a problem, though. Dutch defense is shit at the moment. Left fullback is a major problem (we don't even have a half-decent one) and in the centre the number one man would be Mathijssen (who's not that great), but he's injured now, which means we will have to revert to either Boulahrouz (old) or - God forbid - Fred Bouma (old and shit).

K.

[rjf1]

I wouldn't consider Reizeger a weak link. Maybe not as good as Rijkaard, but when it came to 1 on 1 marking he was one of the best. I remember one CL match where he took Ryan Giggs completely out of the game. Not once did Giggs get past him no matter what he tried.

[Orange14]

As for Holland '74: Ruud Krol was definitely world class. He was a star.
K.

Yes, he was great and one of the few left from the great Ajax teams from the early 70s who was still playing when I came over for my fellowship in the latter part of that decade. I think he even came close to winning Euro footballer of the year.

[Kowalczyk]

I wouldn't consider Reizeger a weak link. Maybe not as good as Rijkaard, but when it came to 1 on 1 marking he was one of the best. I remember one CL match where he took Ryan Giggs completely out of the game. Not once did Giggs get past him no matter what he tried.

Yeah, I shouldn't have used the words 'weakest link'. That's a bit disrespectful.

Let's just say he was very good at what he did: manmarking. Pure defending. He wasn't great when he had the ball. He would win the ball and immediately give it to Blind or De Boer. He was not a man of many creative ideas, but a very good marker.

K.

[souras84]

I hope Holland had the 4 Greek defenders. And of course I hope we had the midfielders Holland has. But our 4 backs are maybe up there with the strongest in Europe

[Tom_]

Is Mathijssen definitely out, now?

[Orange14]

Is Mathijssen definitely out, now?

Still not known. He was to have a scan on the muscle to see what's going on.

[rjf1]

I can just see it now -- Mathjissen out, and van Bommel pressed into service as a makeshift CB. With a CB pairing of him and Heitinga, the opposition will have to take the field wearing body armor.