Johannesburg, June 17 (DPA) The Dutch have earned something of a reputation for playing dazzling football, only to fall at the last hurdle or before.
So coach Bert van Marwijk has a refreshingly different approach. Rather boring for a Dutchman – he just wins.
Not that the Dutch cannot play good football; it’s just that they seem to a bit more effective since van Marwijk took over ‘Oranje’ in the summer of 2008.
Since then the Dutch have only lost once. After 22 games in charge, van Marwijk in fact has the best record of all the coaches at the World Cup.
That still hasn’t brought the 58-year-old former Borussia Dortmund boss unstinting approval back home where the Dutch have their own special relationship with the game.
For Dutch fans and the country’s many experts winning isn’t everything, only winning well. No coach is allowed to play defensively and the 4-3-3 system is set in stone. Chronic failure when it comes to the crunch is simply the price to be paid by the Dutch, even if the fall-out is often considerable.
Van Marwijk is the first coach who does not pay lip service to this way of thinking. Although he says he would like to play every match ‘like Barcelona’ the former left-wing is a pragmatician.
‘You can’t always play beautiful football,’ he says.
Van Marwijk, who won the UEFA Cup with Feyenoord in 2002, succeeded Marco van Basten whose Dutch side at Euro 2008 looked like world-beaters when they defeated France, Italy and Romania, only to crash out to Russia at the first knock-out stage.
Against Denmark Monday, the present Dutch side struggled — with the altitude, the grass, the ball and the noise of the vuvuzelas – but still won 2-0.
Dutch sides of the past may well have succumbed under such adversities. The present one has been praised by commentators for having almost ‘German qualities,’ referring to the effective German national teams of past tournaments.
‘You could actually say that we played a little bit like the Germans,’ said Real Madrid midfielder Rafael van der Vaart who played in the Bundesliga for SV Hamburg.
‘But I wouldn’t like to speak about a new style even if it is true that the coach has made us more effective.’
The Dutch were unbeaten in the qualifying stage but seldom played brilliant football. Yet they were also rarely troubled, and that, says van Marwijk, is also a sign of quality.
The best example for the new sobriety is perhaps Liverpool’s Dirk Kuyt. While Dutch fans debate how and if the four stand-out players Arjen Robben, Robin van Persie, Wesley Sneijder and van der Vaart can play together, Kuyt is an ever-present in the starting line-up.
He cannot quite compare with the others technically but he is a willing workhorse who never stops running for the team. A German-like quality, it seems, which goes down well with van Marwijk.
