Coach’s Oranje can turn it on and are scintillating when they they do – but they are yet to dazzle for a full 90 minutes
What is cute game management and what is boring football? This has become the existential question of Louis van Gaal’s third Netherlands tenure as he plots a route to the World Cup final.
It was the narrative before and after Tuesday’s 2-0 victory over Qatar that sealed a serene passage to Saturday’s last-16 showdown with the USA and, frankly, it is annoying him. When one inquisitor wondered if fans deserved more sparkling fare the man known as the Iron Tulip showed his metal. “Why don’t you write it’s boring? I don’t think things are as bad as you say,” he countered.
Are they? Pertinent here is the fact that Van Gaal has previous with plodding teams, including his Manchester United side of 2014-16. The discourse of fans and the cognoscenti at the time ran: how could a side that contained Wayne Rooney, Memphis Depay, Ángel Di María, Jesse Lingard, Anthony Martial, Juan Mata, and Marcus Rashford be so sideways and pedestrian, so dull and uninventive?
On a consistent basis, that is. Because there were flashes of what might have been for Van Gaal’s United in, say, the 3-0 shellacking of Tottenham at Old Trafford in March 2015 that was an exhibition of high-octane, synchronised play that offered a throwback to the Sir Alex Ferguson golden years. But type was always reverted to and a similar pattern emerges at Qatar 2022 where Van Gaal’s Oranje are yet to dazzle for a full 90 minutes.
At this tournament Van Gaal can call on Depay, Frenkie de Jong and Cody Gakpo in advanced areas, order Denzel Dumfries to be the flying wingback who lit up Euro 2020 under Frank de Boer, and allow Virgil van Dijk to be a classic play-building centre-back of the Ajax/Netherlands school. Except, no. By the Persian Gulf, Dumfries is channelling his inner Aaron Wan-Bissaka not Trent Alexander-Arnold, De Jong’s pretty patterns are yet to be the team focal point and Depay began not game-fit (not Van Gaal’s fault). Gakpo has been the only man putting the fantasy into the Dutch football.
