The Netherlands are being forced to do more defending off the pitch at the World Cup than on it.
Bert van Marwijk’s team made it four wins from four matches on Monday, reaching the quarter-finals after only conceding two goals in South Africa — and still the coach and players are fending off questions about the workmanlike style of their play.
“We want to play beautifully, but it doesn’t always work,” midfielder Mark van Bommel said after another patchy Dutch performance led to a 2-1 victory over Slovakia. “But the bottom line is we qualified for the quarter-finals. We know what we’re doing.”
PHOTO: EPA
The win came on the day Johan Cruyff said Chile had taken over from the Dutch as the most entertaining team at the World Cup.
“It was always our quality to offer fans something extra,” Cruyff said of past Netherlands teams in his column in Dutch daily De Telegraaf. “We may never have won the ultimate prize, but the whole world talked about us. Chile has taken over that role from us.”
That kind of praise wasn’t quite enough to inspire the Chileans later on Monday, when they lost 3-0 to Brazil in the second round.
The Netherlands have been regarded as the best team never to win the World Cup they fell agonizingly short in 1974 and 1978 — when they twice reached the final only to lose to hosts Germany and Argentina. The teams’ fluent attacking style and flowing passing moves made them the darlings of soccer fans the world over.
But despite that stylish play and a string of world-class players such as Cruyff, Ruud Gullit and Dennis Bergkamp, the Netherlands have brought home just one trophy — the 1988 European Championship.
Under Van Marwijk, the team has been transformed into a more pragmatic unit that seeks to grind out wins.
“I think in all the matches we’ve played you can see that we’ve been able to control possession and deny our opponents any space,” Van Marwijk said. “We simply want to win and I don’t think we’re doing a bad job.”
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