Total Football (Failure)

Hours can be passed trying to diagnose all the causes of the recent Dutch debacle.  The magnitude of De Oranje’s ineptitude on and off the pitch provided a plethora of material for the footie pundits and arm-chair analysts.  In the face of any kind of adversity or pressure, Bert van Marwijk’s men recoiled in a manner more akin to a third grader with crippling stage fright than a team of (purported) seasoned pros.  Their utter and complete lack of any sort of cohesion or coordination strangely reminiscent of the Germany’s mishandling of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, and the culmination of all of this being, of course, Holland’s worst ever tournament showing. 

That about sums it up.

The side has hit such a bottom that the post transvestite sucker-punching Danny Bonaduce is still looking down on them. 

It can no longer be denied: now is the time for KNVB to get help. 

Perhaps the only good news for Dutch fans is that the history of football shows us that this feat is not beyond the scope.  It was only just over a decade ago that Germany experienced their worst tournament showing since the 1938 World Cup, exiting the 2000 Euros in the most inglorious of fashions.  A mere eight years later they were competing in the European Championship final in Vienna and another four years on from that they are considered the class of this tourney (along with Spain) and have high hopes for World Cup 2014. 

Before Germany it was France,* whose reconstruction was necessitated by an inability to even qualify 1994 World Cup.  Four years on, they were world champions.  And on whom did the French model their rehabilitation?

The Netherlands, of course.  They are the very originators of football reinvention, who pioneered a youth system that produced a side capable of winning Euro 1988, reversing a draught that saw them fail to qualify for the previous iteration of that competition (as well as the two prior World Cups).

That's more like it.

Let’s just hope that this turnaround follows the trajectory of the Robert Downey Jr. rather than the Lindsay Lohan variety.

I’m in the optimistic camp.  Euro 2020 field, you’ve been warned.   

*Actually, it is now France again after their South African abomination.  And look how far they’ve come: leading Group D going into the final round of group matches and no mutinies of which to speak.  Time really does heal all wounds.