The Dutch football analysts on TV and in the newspapers almost unanimously agreed: the Dutch national team played too cautiously at the World Cup in Qatar and was therefore rightly eliminated.
The more interesting question is: why did the Netherlands play so cautiously? Then national coach Louis van Gaal immediately comes into the picture, something he rarely objects to. Even more interesting is the follow-up question: why did this wait-and-see attitude result in so little good play?
Analysts’ opinions are beginning to differ on these questions. John Graat registers Fidelity: „That fingers point at Van Gaal and his conservative tactics is not justified […] The conclusion after this World Cup must therefore be that his players in particular were not good enough to carry out everything.”
Valentijn Driessen and Mike Verweij find in The Telegraph that Van Gaal himself failed in Qatar. “Add that to the failed qualification in 2001 and it is – despite the excellent end result in 2014 – a fact that Van Gaal is a better club coach than national coach.” They hope that successor Ronald Koeman will abandon Van Gaal’s 5-3-2 system in favor of the 4-3-3 system.
Willem Vissers is in de Volkskrant between these two extremes. Although he criticizes the game (“endless shuffling”), he does not think that the Orange has really failed, given that they reached the quarterfinals. His criticism of Van Gaal sounds cautious: “If only he could have let his team play a little more as he manifested himself.”
Although Driessen and Verweij’s criticism of Van Gaal always contains some resentment – now mixed with gloating – I can best agree with their conclusions. Van Gaal can indeed be blamed for a few things.
While there was almost no time to practice it, he chose a system that the players had to get used to. Captain Virgil van Dijk hinted during the tournament that he was still struggling. Van Gaal also counted on having two fast strikers – Depay and Bergwijn. That was his biggest miscalculation. Depay and Bergwijn have hardly appeared in this World Cup piece. Van Gaal should have been warned: Depay was already playing weakly at FC Barcelona before his injury; Bergwijn had also been bad at Ajax for months.
It also remained unclear what exactly Van Gaal wanted from Frenkie de Jong, perhaps his most important player. Build, check? De Jong now did a little bit of everything, but the result was meager for him: remarkably unobtrusive.
Do the players fail when they are forced into a system they don’t feel comfortable with? Then the coach can always wash his hands in innocence. Van Gaal also fell short psychologically. He aroused too high expectations among players and outsiders with his repeated prediction that “we have a good chance of becoming world champions”. He seemed to believe in his boast and thus increased the pressure on the players.
Downright unwise was the way in which he stimulated the Argentines beforehand with condescending remarks about Messi, their tactics and, of all things, their penalties.
Van Gaal has undeniably meant a lot to Dutch football, but he could have given himself a better farewell.
A version of this article also appeared in the December 14, 2022 newspaper