From Cruyff to Koeman: Netherlands, the eternal runner -up

Always the modern disquisition between Dutch and Dutch which, as far as football is concerned, has another series of precepts that affect the losing vocation of the orange team. A trend in great events that hopes to avoid Ronald Koeman, The local coach.

The Dutch team is persecuted for memories. ‘Total football’ was called the style of play that imposed Johan Cruyff and his entourage in the seventies. It was the virtuous hegemony of the ‘mechanical orange’ that led a country of 17 million inhabitants to heaven that had been absent from the great World Cup citations for the sequels that World War II left in its population.

An ornamental and collective idea made its way in the 1974 World Cup In Germany, resolved in favor of the hosts and against the selection he commanded for Johan Cruyff. Since then football and its selection is a badge of this country, such as bicycles, bike lanes, tulips or mills in the countryside.

Legend, medium jokingly, that the three crosses of the Amsterdan flag are due to the three World Cup finals for their selection. The Dutch team is the one that fell in the last game (three) without having won any title. Germany gave four times in the late, but has also raised the World Cup four times.

For this reason the famous phrase of the former English player Gary Lineker It can adapt to the Netherlands. “Football is a game that the English invented, play eleven against eleven and always wins Germany,” he said. In this case, it could be reinvented with the “… eleven against eleven and always stays Holland to the doors.”

The level of Spain

Koeman wants to invest the prognosis of the tie, which grants more possibilities to Spain. «Of course, Spain is a rival that sometimes pushes you back. But it is also clear that when they lose the ball, there is a lot of space ». The coach wants his team to leave ostracism, although in the last Eurocup he played the semifinals against England. «That is something that is discussed with the players. These are the moments you defend, but also the moments in which there are spaces to leave ».

Holland occupies, for a decade, a position among the ten best teams in the world, according to the classification that FIFA elaborates. And also now, after multiple renovations and aesthetic processes with their reference coaches, Van Gaal, Frank Rijkard, Van BastenGuus Hiddink, Frank of Boer and Koeman.

They are surnames that have made history in the nation of tulips. During the eighties and ninety, three Dutch players grouped talent in an Italian team. They were Van Basten Gullit and Rijkaard In the Milan of Arrigo Sacchi. Tradition lasted with the football imprint that Van Gaal imposed with figures always coming from Ajax, Boer or Kluivert, all of them emigrants to Barcelona.

The nickname of the ‘mechanical orange’ has never abandoned this collective conception of the game that is a distinctive, a very marked personality, a reflection of a country idiosyncrasy.

Holland lost its first final in the World Cup in Germany 74 (2-1) and the next, in Argentina against the hosts with Mario Kempes at the head and already without Cruyff, absent for still inexplicated reasons. 3-1 won Argentina and since then it is known as the eternal runner-up, French football version Raymond Poulidor, Eternal second in the Tour in front of all the champions of the time, Anquetil or Merckx.

Frenkie de Jong

That is why De Jong, the Barça player, asked him at the press conference why his selection has not won a top -level country since 2019. “Isn’t Belgium a top team?”replicates. «I understand what you mean. Of course, we want to beat the best countries, but do not play against them in all international periods. We hope to demonstrate in these two games that we can win a big team like Spain ».

The last World Cup that the Netherlands lost was the delirium of Spain, Iniesta of my lifethe stop from Casillas to Robben, the chest kick from Jong to Xabi Alonso and the party of a country that had never celebrated something so big in football. “The third will be the defeated,” said the Dutch before that game in South Africa. Words that Joachim Low countered, the German coach who had been eliminated by the forest team. «Spain will be world champion».

The current Dutch selection maintains that recognizable tradition, although its players are no longer world stars, but powerful team players with luck disparate in the trajectory. Memphis Depay, little content for so much media propaganda; Frenkie de Jong, five years in Barcelona without making the big leap; Van dijk, defense leader of Liverpool; Gravenberch and Gakpo, pawns from the same club.