The U.S. national team recently defeated Costa Rica 1:0 in Denver in one of the more bizarrely entertaining soccer games I’ve seen of late, owing to the several inches of snow which fell during the game. I wholeheartedly approved of this, as this was a qualifier for the World Cup, and one of the most important things you can do is maximize your home-field advantage, since points are at a premium. The Americans said afterwards that they’d selected Denver as the site for this game to prepare them for the high-altitude conditions of Mexico City, where they were due to play a few days later, but snow in the Rockies is always a possibility in March and no one in the American camp was particularly bothered at the decidedly un-Central American weather conditions. The Ticos somewhat half-heartedly protested the game after it was over, of course, which was summarily dismissed by FIFA. They had nothing to lose by protesting, wouldn’t have been doing so if they’d salvaged a draw, and they have been subjecting opponents to oppressive heat and torrential rains on the plastic parking lot of a pitch in their former home stadium for years, so they know well how this meta-game is played. (Although the Ticos now have a lovely new national football grounds, with real grass and everything, but it’s too early to tell if their well-accepted home-field advantage from the previous pitch has transferred over.)
The drama and intensity of World Cup Qualifying makes up for the fact that the football can be somewhat ragged at times. These are essentially all-star teams, after all, most of which are hastily arranged in the moment and have little time to prepare. And every region of the world takes on unique characteristics during this process. Pretty much the same 6-8 teams are always battling for the 4 positions in Asia, as the drop off in quality is substantial and leaves you wondering how it is that these countries with massive populations somehow cannot find 11 quality footballers among their ranks. African qualifying is wildly unpredictable, as there are always issues regarding finances, politics, and other sources of internal strife among federations which often undermine the talent on the pitch. Just fielding an XI is sometimes a bigger African challenge than getting them to play well. The South American tourney is, quite simply, the toughest tournament in the world – 16-18 games played in hostile environments and challenging conditions (the most infamous being the 12,000 ft. of altitude in Bolivia). In Europe, the random draw almost always results in a Group of Death (resulting in a very good team being bounced), a Group of Bad (where an overrated team’s true colours are revealed and some obscure, marginal side earns a place), and a Group Where Everyone Shows Up Drunk which makes no sense at all. Europe also features an alarming number of REALLY BAD TEAMS who are there to be pummeled so as to pad the goal difference. Heaven help you if you lose to Luxembourg or the Færœ Islands, that’s all I’ve got to say on that front.
All of this ultimately funnels to the World Cup which, in 2014, is happening in Brazil. Perhaps the most apt description of Brazil comes from Franklin Foer in the book How Soccer Explains the World: “Brazil is the bizarro version of the United States. It’s the fantastically vast, resource-rich, new-world culture that didn’t become a global hegemon.” There has been slow but steady progress in the nation over the past two decades, and this tournament, along with the 2016 Olympics in Rio, is a chance for the nation of Brazil to show off some newfound confidence and swagger, to announce it is ready to take its rightful place among the big players in all international arenas, including those far larger than the massive Maracanã (which is saying something, given that the 1950 final at Maracanã was played before a crowd of 199,854).
There is a general sense in the sport that while the spectacle of a Brazilian World Cup will be magical, the tourney itself is likely to amount to little more than a coronation as the Brazilians capture their 6th championship on their home soil. Some of their strongest challengers don't think they stand much of a chance. The fact that the Brazilians are such overwhelming favourites to win on their home soil is really not that much of a bother, as it’s generally accepted in every nation on earth not named Argentina that the Brazilians play the best football. The idea of the Brazilians lifting the trophy after triumphing in the final at the Maracanã seems almost to be in keeping with the natural order of things, a fitting end to to a showcase of the sport in the nation that cherishes it the most.
But this is IN PLAY LOSE, where we care about teams that do not succeed. And if it has been written in the stars by the Football Gods that Brazil will triumph in Rio de Janeiro in 2014, surely the Football Gods would also write in the stars that they will defeat, in that final, the most worthy of adversaries. An opponent that will bring the act of losing to its highest levels of elegance before succumbing to their inevitable fate.
That would be the Dutch.
And I have already accepted the fate, me being the owner of six iterations of Oranje jerseys which I keep in my closet, and former owner of one of these beauties from 1988:
Having already gone through their once-every-decade meltdown during the 2012 Euros, the Oranje are doing what they generally do in World Cup Qualifying, which is ANNIHILATE THEIR OPPONENTS. Unlike a great many teams with a propensity for playing scared vs. the Brazilians, the Dutch are never intimidated and almost stubbornly so. They won’t have any problem stepping into the ring in Rio and getting in a few good swings of their own in the World Cup Final. And sure, I’m sort of just glossing over the other 30 teams in the tourney here in foretelling this Brazilian-Dutch final, but it really cannot end any other way. If Brazil are the greatest champions in sport, their triumph should necessarily come over sport’s greatest also-ran. Just as nothing rhymes with orange, no one takes losing to the levels of the orange-clad footballers from the Netherlands.
Just as the Football Gods have already decreed a Brazil-Oranje final for 2014, so too did they decree the final of South Africa 2010, when the two must frustrated footballing nations on earth both found themselves in the final and pitted against each other, with the ascension to the realm of immortality that comes with being crowned World Cup Champion necessarily coming at the expense of the other. Spain v. Netherlands was about a half a century in the making, as during that time the two nations have often found themselves allies in the struggle for European footballing supremacy against the Germans and Italians, sharing ideas as countless hordes of Dutch players flocked south to be employed in La Liga. The unique Spanish passing game, in fact, has its roots in ideas brought to F.C. Barcelona in the 1970s by Johan Cruijff, Holland’s greatest football ambassador. And the Dutch lost, of course, losing 1:0 in O.T. to a great Spanish side which has also won the Euros in 2008 and 2012, and which can legitimately make the case for being one of the great teams of all time. Prior to 2010, the Spaniards and the Dutch could both lay claim to the least-desirable title in sports, the Best Team Never To Win A World Cup. After 2010, there is no longer any room for dispute as to who carries that moniker.
Despite a half-century of creating some of the games greatest players, sharpest coaches and grandest statements of style, the Dutch have won only one major championship, the 1988 Euros. They are thrice losers in World Cup finals, twice having lost on their opponents’ home turf. And when they don’t lose in the final, the Dutch still make a memorable exit – their losses in epic matches with Brazil in the 1994 Quarters and the 1998 Semis were the best matches of those respective tournaments; their losses in the Round of 16 to the West Germans in 1990 and Portugal in 2006 have become notorious for their nastiness, the latter match producing something like 20 yellow cards and three ejections while the former match produced this unsightly display but also moments like this. And again, that 1990 tussle was probably the best match of the tourney (and it speaks volumes about how bad Italy 1990 was as an event when the best match involves guys spitting on each other).
The Dutch were among the favorites in 1990, possessing two European Players of the Year up front in Gullitt and Van Basten among their stunning collection of talent, but they made an early exit from the tourney through a mix of bad play and also some genuinely bad luck. They were placed in a Group of Death, drew their first three games (one of which owing to a marginal late penalty awarded the Egyptians), were level with Ireland on points, goal difference and goals scored, and wound up playing the Germans in the Round of 16 through the drawing of lots.
But bad luck seems to go along with their penchant for occasionally horrible displays of self-destruction, none worse than the semis of the 2000 Euros in Rotterdam, on home soil, when the Dutch drew 0:0 to 10-man Italy and missed five penalties on their way to being bounced in a shootout. The shootout is the bane of the existence of the Oranje, a crapshoot of a way to end a game in which the Dutch inevitably roll snake eyes.
It’s easy to like the Dutch, because the football they play is so damned good. They are purveyors of some of the most aesthetically pleasing football out there, and are zealously proud of this fact. (It is routinely written into the contract of Dutch managers that their teams must play elegant, attractive football.) Lots of goals, lots of movement, with the constant threat of a goal from seemingly anywhere on the pitch hanging over their opponents. It’s a style that is both entertaining and ruthless. The Dutch were also-rans in the sport until the 1960s, when the counterculture bastion of Amsterdam spawned a revolutionary approach to the game which came to be known as Total Football, a virtual wheel of moving parts and precision in which players can interchange – defenders attack, attackers drop back, etc. – and the flow of play is dictated by figuring out and proceeding to exploit your opponent’s weaknesses. It’s a devastatingly effective system in that it destroys much of your preconceived notion of what players at certain positions on the field can do.
A good way to explain this to an American audience is to use a basketball example: whereas most teams have a 7’0” big man underneath and a 6’2” point guard out front who passes and stays out of the fray, how would you defend a team with five guys who were all in the range of 6’4” to 6’8” or so, all of whom could shoot, pass, and rebound? Such versatility would potentially negate any advantages your team had, since it would create a mismatch somewhere on the floor. (And if you look at the makeup of some of the championship college basketball teams over the years, you notice how quite a few of them are built this way.)
The Oranje game requires multifaceted, versatile players all over the field and breeds creativity, but is also quite cerebral (“Football is played with the head,” as Cruijff has famously said), so the Dutch bring the football fan an intellectual satisfaction to the game as well – not only do they have more talent than the opponents, but they often seem smarter as well.
Too smart for their own good, sometimes. Smartest Guy in the Room sort of smart. The Dutch are often undone by internal bickering and dissent, the management of their XI akin to managing 11 lawyers. And in a system where everyone can be an attacker, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Dutch seem to have trouble developing defenders. Why play defense, when scoring goals is much more fun? If you could put 11 forwards on the field, the Dutch would’ve won every World Cup since 1974.
Ah, yes, 1974. I don’t need to go into that much detail about 1974, since the final in Munich between the Dutch and West Germany has been written about more than any other football match in history, and quite possibly any other sporting event. All you really need to know is that the (over)confident Dutch strode onto the field in Munich, kicked off, connected a dozen or so passes, earned a penalty, and scored to go up 1:0 before the Germans had even touched the ball. And after that opening salvo – the most dominating, terrifying first three minutes in the history of the sport – they then proceeded to lose the game 2:1, complete with a disputed German penalty thrown in to add some conspiratorial angst to the mix. You have to comb through the annals of history to find a team as great as the Dutch squad of 1974 that came up short. The closest thing to the Oranje were the Hungarians of 1954, the undisputed kings of the sport at the time who inexplicably lost 3:2 in the final in Bern to … West Germany, a team whom the Hungarians had poleaxed 8:3 earlier in the tournament.
“Football is a game played by two teams of 11 players in which the Germans always win.”
– Gary Lineker
The Germans are, of course, the game of football’s greatest villains, the dasher of many a nation’s dreams of glory. They and the Italians both, in fact, the two sides having won seven World Cups between them and done so in ways their detractors would decry as dishonorable. And by “detractors,” I mean the four other great footballing nations of Europe – England, France, Spain and, yes, the Dutch, all of whom have developed decided national identities to their style of play over the decades and generally refused to compromise those principles for the sake of a result – meaning, of course, they often wind up losing, and usually to either the Germans or the Italians. This notion of what is honorable and not is somewhat ridiculous, of course, the implication being that both teams cheat. According to the narrative, the German “steely resolve” is little more than physically bludgeoning their opponents, while the Italians suffocate you with defense, counterattack, take dives, work the refs, and bait the opponents into conceding free kicks and penalties, and both teams will play all the angles to get the desired result. While there is certainly some evidence to that effect (most notably this disgraceful performance from 1982), neither side would be able to succeed at the highest levels without the talent to back it up. They may come off as unlikable in the process, and seem perfectly OK with doing so, but you cannot deny the results in the most results-oriented of businesses. And whomever started the melee in Germany-Netherlands 1990, or France v. Italy in the 2006 final, you sure as hell cannot argue that the Dutch or French didn’t contribute. Such principled sorts should have known better, don’t you think?
Pretty much all principles of decency went out the window in 1978 for the World Cup in Argentina, one of the uglier sporting events of all time as it was played out in a nation ruled by a military junta, a lot who are easily on the short list for Worst People in the History of the World that desperately viewed an Argentine victory in the tournament as a stamp of their legitimacy as a ruling body, and went to extremes to try to do that. The higher echelons of sport have always been filled with scofflaws and scoundrels, but 1978 took that to entirely different levels. (There is an excellent chapter on this event in the fabulous book Soccer Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper, a book which also does well to explain various aspects of Dutch football neurosis, including the national catharsis that was the 1988 Euros victory over their German rivals.) Even with Cruijff’s absence, the Dutch were a terrific side and worked their way into the final where they faced the hosts, who had scrambled their way to the final with a bit of alleged Peruvian assistance:
The most significant example of alleged match-fixing occurred in the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. This was more than just a football competition, it was all that kept the ruling military junta from losing power, and thus Argentina had to win.
Come the last match of the semi-final stage, they needed to defeat Peru by four goals to reach the final rather than arch-rivals Brazil. Peru were a useful side but, after an Argentine team-talk from which the goalkeeper and substitutes were barred, Argentina won 6-0 after Peru hit a post in the opening minutes. Shortly afterwards it is alleged that Argentina shipped 35,000 tons of free grain - and probably some free arms - to Peru, and the Argentine central bank unfroze $50m in credits for Peru.
– The Independent
And the Dutch lost, of course, 3:1 in O.T. after very nearly winning in regulation, a Dutch shot hitting the woodwork in the game’s dying moments. One can only wonder what might have happened in Argentina if the home side hadn’t prevailed. (More than a few theorists have noted that the junta survived the loss to the Brits in the Falklands War but couldn’t survive La Albiceleste losing to Belgium in the opening of the 1982 World Cup, a defeat which triggered the side’s hasty early exit from the tourney.) The result of the 1978 final also gave the Argentines a rather dubious reputation, one which stayed with them for more than a decade. For all the brilliance of Maradona, his greatness can never be separated from the "Hand of God," and their unsightly march to the 1990 final through a series of goalless draws and wins in shootouts certainly didn’t help.
The argument put forth by the purists, of course, is that teams such as the Germans, Italians and Argentines cheat because they cannot compete on a fair playing field. If they really have so much talent, they shouldn’t have to resort to dirty tactics to win. I would like to agree with that sentiment, being a loyal supporter of the Oranje and loving the way the Dutch play the game, but I think it’s somewhat misguided. And I’m also getting to the point where I’m tired of glorious losses.
I think I reached that point in 1998, actually, in the epic loss to Brazil. The Brazilians had a stunning array of offensive talent but a weak central defense, a susceptibility to strong center forward play easily masked since teams were so afraid to attack the Brazilians, fearful of being exposed to the Brazilian counter. The two sides that had thrown caution to the wind – Norway and Denmark – had big forwards who dominated the games up front, the results being a shock Brazilian loss to Norway and a near-death experience in the Quarterfinals vs. the Danes. Well, the Dutch figured this out, of course, and lobbed cross after cross after cross into the Brazilian goalmouth, only to have opportunities go awry for one reason or another. It was a fast and furious game which ended 1:1, and the Dutch inevitably lost in a penalty shootout, and got to watch on TV as the French employed much same strategy (albeit with their fleet of midfielders in the key roles) and waxed the Brazilians 3:0 in the final. That was a beautiful game, that semifinal, one of the more stunning matches I can recall, and the Dutch were heartbroken in the end. I’m all for beautiful football, of course, but at some point you have to stop trying to play beautifully and start trying to win the game. Style be damned.
And the international football media skewered the Dutch side of 2010 for it’s occasionally un-Oranje performances on their way to the 2010 final, as they showed a penchant for physical play and played at a much slower pace than is their norm. Yet there they were on the game’s grandest stage, and they had a plan for the ball-hogging, pass-happy Spaniards, a plan taken from the Swiss and the Americans, of all things – the two sides which had most recently defeated the reigning European champion Spaniards. The Dutch came out and knocked the Spaniards around. They were physical, overaggressive, playing the body and skirting the edges. (And in truth, they got away with some pretty nasty fouls which warranted red cards.) They wanted to frustrate Spain, knock them off their game, and then try to spring a counter with Robben, their swiftest player, on the square and hopefully unfocused Spanish defense. And it worked perfectly, of course … until Robben missed. Well, he was saved by Casillas, the Spanish goalkeeper, but he should have done better with the chance. From that point on in the game, there seemed this sense of inevitability to the proceedings, a sense that they’d let the Spaniards wriggle off the hook and that defeat would eventually follow.
So not only can the Dutch not win when they play their game, they apparently cannot win when playing someone else’s game. They come up short in some of the sport’s most hostile environments, on neutral ground, and, in the case of the 2000 Euros, on home soil as well. And it’s always memorable, it’s always noteworthy. Never a dull moment. After years of watching this, I have come to conclude this is how it is meant to be.
And given their place in footballing history, it would only stand to reason that the Oranje would step into the ring vs. the Brazilians next summer, be the most worthy of adversaries and ultimately lose. I can see no other possible outcome. (Unless, of course, the Oranje somehow get paired with the Belgians along the way, who annoy them and irritate them and always find a way to thieve points from them.) So it has been written, and so it shall be. The great unknown will come in 2018, when the event is hosted by Russia, who possess one of the game’s most dominating home-field advantages but who also are one of the game’s great underachievers. All bets are off on that one. In the meantime, I will gladly dress in orange and hope they can buck fate just this once. Hup Holland! Now win the damn game already, would you?
