I hope we do not join such a tournament. It is just a unimportant tournament. Who cares if we win it. It is not he WC. It will just be a glorified friendly, and I do not care about friendly matches. I will probably not even watch this. The near future of the dutch is indeed bleak. However I remain optimistic that we will bounce back at some point. The future also looked bleak after the Bergkamp generation (ganted not as bad as it does now). The dutch competition is also terrible. And I am not sure it is good for the development of dutch talent. Also there is not any world class talent in the youth at the moment that we know of. I am not sure the future of the American team looks much better. They also need drastic changes. if you cannot qualify in your qualification group than there is something seriously wrong. I do not know enough about American soccer to comment on what needs to change. But there is enough money in the US to get a good developmental programme. But for some reason it just does not happen. On a slightly more positive note. I am happy that Peru qualified, now I have a team to root for in the WC (since my brother lives in Peru).
Hoffenheim now confirming Bayern's push for a Sandro Wagner transfer, coach Nagelsmann saying a transfer will likely happen if Bayern agrees to the transfer sum.
I'm not saying they should do it. It's just crazy looking at the teams that failed to qualify. I know there's discussions here about trying to put something together...but it's highly unlikely it will happen. There's no FIFA calendar openings and there's no chance FIFA would even sanction it. They're not going to allow anything that could possibly take even 1 eye off of the World Cup. Plus, I doubt most club teams would even release their players for something like this. IMO, Dutch football has completely lost its identity. The decline actually happened going into the 2010 WC. Yes, you made the finals, but it wasn't Dutch football. It's almost as if there's some karma involved for that kick to the chest that went appropriately unpunished. Total Football was a revelation and changed the game. I loved the Dutch national team in the 80's and 90's. They were my favorite national team and Ajax was my favorite club. Someone needs to recreate that identity and quit trying to play like other countries. The USMNT has never really had an identity other than being very well conditioned and tough. I think we're in a transition period and there will be a lot of good to come out of this failure. We have to recognize that it's time to go from being that scrappy team to one that actually has talent. I'm around youth club players a lot. The talent they have now is so much better than what we had growing up. This is a great time to reset and rebuild the system with proper coaching and proper training. The youth National Teams had a very successful year and I believe it's a new beginning, led by Christian Pulisic and Josh Sargent.
It's weird, whenever I watch Feyenoord or Ajax from time to time, it feels like they have another young promising player I haven't heard of yet, but they don't seem to make the next step following. The one player from the recent team with world class skills was Robben, and he's 33 now. Don't know what's going wrong, but I'm sure you will produce a new bunch of great players, if not in five, then in ten years. World football needs a strong Oranje. But what about your friendly neighbor, that is mentioned in your national anthem and never would make fun of your team?
Gotta hope for Celtic to somehow reach a draw tonight in Paris. Would give the final matchday in Group B some extra spice.
I'm thinking Celtic will be raped 0:4 or something like that, PSG is nasty. The Bayern-PSG rematch will be epic no matter what, Bayern's pride is on the line.
Yeah, but I don't want the sheiks to rest players or even send a B-team, just because they think they're already safe at #1.
Well... almost. Bad game by Bayern, but regarding the injury list I'll take it. So now we have to go for a four goal difference in two weeks. Wouldn't be too mad about 2nd place though, looking at some of the winners from the weaker groups (Thanks, Platini).
