Dutch Football's Problems Run Deeper Than 2018 World Cup Qualifying Struggles

Among the round of international friendlies played out on Tuesday night, the Netherlands lost to Italy in Amsterdam. It was not a game heavy with meaning in the overall scheme of things, and despite providing decent entertainment value, it is likely to be forgotten quickly.

It was, however, a sixth defeat for the national team in their last seven games in Amsterdam—the other one a draw, against Belgium, in a November friendly. After one of those reverses, in a World Cup qualifier against France in October, AS Roma's Kevin Strootman scoffed at the idea that the team's form in the capital was becoming a mental obstacle for them, when he was pressed on the subject by this column.

"The grass is green, and the ball is round," he told us. That much is true, and moreover, it has become ever clearer in recent days that the Netherlands' form at the home of Ajax is a symptom, rather than a cause, of the current difficulties in which Dutch football finds itself.

Saturday's defeat to Bulgaria in Sofia was a nadir, even judged on the low standards of recent times, and a damaging one, with it being a World Cup qualifier. Speaking to Dutch television network NOS after the match (via Goal), Arjen Robben ripped into his side for the "deplorable level" of their first-half performance.

Johnny Metgod, the former Netherlands and Real Madrid midfielder, told BBC World Service's Steve Crossman that among his country's performances over the last 50 years, it ranked as "one of the worst."

It was little surprise that coach Danny Blind was fired less than 24 hours afterwards, though in his exit statement on the KNVB's website (quoted here by the Mirror), he implied that the Sofia loss was little more than a hiccup.

Few agreed, and it brought an end to the reign of a coach who had never convinced the Dutch public or media, getting the role a decade after leading Ajax to a 15-year low of fourth place in his one season as a top-flight head coach.

Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press/Associated Press

"Apart from that," Dutch football journalist Michiel Jongsma, of benefoot.net, told Bleacher Report, "after seeing an experienced manager not renowned for tactical nous struggle so hard to get anything out of the Dutch team in Guus Hiddink, it didn't really help that Danny Blind wasn't a known tactician as a coach either."

Blind may have been a symbol of a more plentiful era, being the only Dutch player to have won every club competition under the FIFA and UEFA banners, which he capped by winning the then-Intercontinental Cup with Ajax in 1995, at the age of 34. Yet he came to represent a culture of institutional failure.  

"The main issue," continues Jongsma, "was that in 2014, Ronald Koeman was the people's favourite to succeed Louis van Gaal. Snubbing him and ending up with Danny Blind was seen as the epitome of all that was falling apart."

Missing out seems all the more ruinous now; not just because of the Netherlands' current situation, with an uphill battle in prospect to even reach the play-offs for Russia 2018, but also because of Koeman's positive progression with Everton this campaign.

The dearth of inspiring contenders to replace Blind is clear. This wasn't a sacking precipitated by the looming availability of a superior candidate but a swift reaction to an unacceptable occurrence. For his part, Jongsma highlights only Utrecht's Erik ten Hag as having the potential to reach the top level "and no one else," which goes a long way towards explaining why a growing number of commentators are calling for an appointment from abroad. The national team hasn't had a foreign coach since the legendary Ernst Happel took a Johan Cruyff-less side to the 1978 World Cup final in Argentina.

The World Cup final, of course, is a major touchstone in the current confusion over the Netherlands' struggles after they lost the 2010 edition in extra time to Spain and only missed out on a return visit in 2014 after a semi-final defeat on penalties to Argentina. While Van Gaal's side started that tournament in Brazil spectacularly, with that 5-1 win over the defending champions in Fortaleza, the signs of decline were already there.

"I do think the wrong conclusions were drawn from that success," Jongsma continues. "Over the last 330 minutes in the tournament (excluding the third-place playoff win over Brazil), the Dutch had been ahead for only one minute, which was vs. Mexico in injury time. But all of a sudden, the misery of Euro 2012 seemed forgotten and expectations were again high when Oranje went into the qualifiers for Euro 2016."

Van Gaal's last-minute switch to 5-3-2, to maintain traditional Dutch width while having a front two, had worked to an extent, but Hiddink ditched it post-tournament, with a reversion to 4-3-3. Yet while the Dutch game has carved its place in European football's history through training and tactics—which, combined, have made the nation perennial overachievers—the changing landscape of the game economically has altered the way in which players are developed.  

Manu Fernandez/Associated Press/Associated Press

"We've changed our strategy a little bit," Frank de Boer told this columnist in a film for the Guardian in 2015, when he was still Ajax head coach. "They have to be ready earlier, at 18 or 19, for the first team because when they're 23, which is already 'old' in our terms, they can be sold, and the other generation has to be ready [to replace them]. You cannot expect it to be like how it was done in the past."

"My colleague Philipp Ertl from Opta Sports in Austria told me last week that the Eredivisie is basically the youngest top-tier league of a decent level," Jongsma says. "This doesn't really help the development of players. Matthijs de Ligt against Bulgaria was a perfect example. He had played a few games but never came across the more experienced, savvy, albeit not infinitely talented type of forward you see in international football."

Blind was criticised heavily for throwing De Ligt, whose mistake led to the opening goal, to the wolves in Sofia—the 17-year-old has started just twice in the Eredivisie for Ajax. He is, though, just an extreme example of a wider problem. "Against Bulgaria," points out Jongsma, "there was only one player with over 45 caps (Robben), while six of them had fewer than 20 caps, with three having fewer than 10."

Themba Hadebe/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press

Dutch football went through a period of soul-searching in 2010, when many traditionalists considered the double pivot of Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong an affront to the nation's football history. Now they, and whoever the new coach is, must closely examine the way things are done all over again and perhaps, this time, with a touch more pragmatism.

"It's a lot about Dutch football in general learning to become more conceptual and less rigid," says Jongsma. "The inventiveness of the nation has been at the fore for centuries, and it's something that seems to be lacking in Dutch football at the moment."

Ridding themselves of their Amsterdam phobia and turning around the qualification campaign would be positive steps, but the Netherlands must dig much deeper to find the answers their football needs for a prosperous future.