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Van Basten returns home
Written by Sawyer | 11th October 2005 | 0 Comment(s)
On occasions someone comes along who is a complete ‘football genius’. It doesn’t usually follow that a great player evolves in to a great manager, at the outset of this qualifying campaign the appointment of Marco Van Basten as manager of the Oranje certainly raised the odd eyebrow or two.
A few questioned his step up from the Ajax reserve team to International football management, but in just over a year any doubters have been well and truly silenced. The former Milan striker was only appointed in July 2004 after Dick Advocaat's sticky reign at the helm of De Oranje, and the 2-0 victory against eternal nemesis the Czech Republic last Saturday completed his initial task at hand and sealed a place in Germany.
After the under-achievement of the generation which followed the ultra-gifted Euro 88-winning side which Van Basten himself graced, the former World Footballer of the Year risked all by cutting away the household names.
Patrick Kluivert, Boudewijn Zenden and Clarence Seedorf are just three of the much-vaunted and flaunted Euro 2004 squad who have seen their wings clipped on the international stage as Van Basten has ruthlessly stripped away the old vestiges of failure in the hope of inspiring a new generation of tournament winners.
Van Basten has turned to the Eredivisie - rather than the big names playing abroad - to found the future of his team with the fine UEFA Cup run of Alkmaar pushing defenders Barry Opdam, Ron Vlaar, Tim de Cler and Jan Kromkamp - now at Villarreal - into the forefront of the Dutch coach's thinking.
Feyenoord's Dirk Kuijt - who turned down moves to foreign climes over the summer - finds himself in the squad ahead of not only Kluivert but also Bayern Munich's Roy Makaay, and gives Van Basten a defter option to play alongside Ruud van Nistelrooy than PSV's more bustling Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.
But tellingly, Van Basten has fallen back on the founding stone of the first great Dutch teams, that of the Ajax youth academy, where he was given his first coaching role. Five Ajax youngsters featured in the squad to face the Czechs and Macedonia with Rafael van der Vaart - newly-exiled in Germany with Hamburg - a sixth product of the world's most fruitful football production line.
But despite being a virtual newcomer to the world of international management, Van Basten has proven he has a ‘wise old head on young shoulders’ by providing his exuberant and youthful midfield with a wise old head of their own. Phillip Cocu and Edgar Davids remain from the past, although the later was only a recent addition, but provide the squad with much needed experience.
Interestingly however against the Czechs, 20 year old Hedwiges Maduro of Ajax was preferred to Davids, who has been enjoying a new lease of life in a Spurs shirt since the start of the season and along with Middlesbrough's combative George Boateng has been brought in from the international wilderness to stiffen the backbone of Van Basten's side.
Although the Euro 2004 team did reach the Semi-Final stage, their performance was generally greeted with derision in Holland, and Van Basten vowed to return the sparkle back to the play of the Oranje. It may not quite be a ‘revolution’ as yet, but the first 15 months has been a good start.
The Victory in Prague was the first by any Dutch team on Czech soil and left the Czechs with a nervy game to play in Finland, which the duly won to qualify for the play-offs at the expense of Romania. They will expect to overcome Norway to complete their route to Germany, nevertheless that is of no concern to Van Basten who now has eight months to perfect his team and maybe; just maybe emulate Rinus Michels and take the usually underachieving Dutch to tournament victory?
Should Holland pay the ultimate price for non-qualification in 2002 and fail to be one of the top eight seeds at the tournament, then they will certainly be the second seeded side everyone will want to avoid.
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