I remember Reiziger as the epitome of averageness. Apart from Rivaldo that van Gaal led Barca side was an abomination.

Gunner89 wrote:

Klaus wrote:

He arguably does when you look at the clubs and the titles and compare it with how he turned out. Shadow of the player he could have been.

Yup what a wasted talent. His last international cap came at the age of 22.

Mt point is at least he had talents. He was a good player for top clubs, not those average or shit names brandished here.

Klaus wrote:

Alright, I'll give you guys Reiziger, but I'm sorry, there's just no alternate reality in which Kuffour was an excellent footballer.

I remember Reiziger as a decent full back tbh. Kuffour was your stereotypical 90s defender/thug, was pretty highly rated in his younger years but never got close to fulfilling that promise. Also I don't think there was ever a footballer who collected as many red cards in as relatively few games as he did

Hearing Reiziger's name made me nostalgic, so I looked up the team Holland put out against Argentina in the '98 WC QF: Van der Sar, Reiziger, Stam, F. de Boer, Numan, R. de Boer, Jonk, Davids, Cocu, Bergkamp, Kluivert. A world class player in almost every position. And now Memphis is our best player

What happened to the development in Dutch football exactly? It feels like a fairly recent thing, because up until the early 00s there were still players like van Persie, Robben, van der Vaart and Sneijder coming through. A lot of them ended up having disappointing careers relative to what they could have been but at least they were fundamentally talented. Even not-quite-there players like Huntelaar were producing at a fairly high level.

Savz wrote:

Casillas
Srna
Valdes

i disagree with all 3.

srna is incredibly loyal to shakhtar and is a very good technical footballer

casillas and valdes were never the best keepers on the planet, but they were both very good. madrid is as cutthroat a team as there is and they wouldnt have kept casillas as first choice for a decade if he wasnt actually very good, homegrown or not

Klaus wrote:

What happened to the development in Dutch football exactly? It feels like a fairly recent thing, because up until the early 00s there were still players like van Persie, Robben, van der Vaart and Sneijder coming through. A lot of them ended up having disappointing careers relative to what they could have been but at least they were fundamentally talented. Even not-quite-there players like Huntelaar were producing at a fairly high level.

poor management/setup? that shitster van gaal started the descent. hiddink's latest stint was a disaster, blind is to be determined.

something definitely happened after 2010. its hard to go from reaching the final of the world cup to losing three straight at euro 2012

mdgoonah41 wrote:

poor management/setup? that shitster van gaal started the descent. hiddink's latest stint was a disaster, blind is to be determined.

something definitely happened after 2010. its hard to go from reaching the final of the world cup to losing three straight at euro 2012

Yeah, the setup in the national team has definitely been poor, but I was thinking more in terms of domestic talent development. Something has happened on club level in Dutch football, because we don't see these players coming through anymore. The problem is not that they don't get selected for the national team, it's that there are no better players to select.

Klaus wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

poor management/setup? that shitster van gaal started the descent. hiddink's latest stint was a disaster, blind is to be determined.

something definitely happened after 2010. its hard to go from reaching the final of the world cup to losing three straight at euro 2012

Yeah, the setup in the national team has definitely been poor, but I was thinking more in terms of domestic talent development. Something has happened on club level in Dutch football, because we don't see these players coming through anymore. The problem is not that they don't get selected for the national team, it's that there are no better players to select.

The timing is strange in that they stopped producing players of that talent roughly around the same time that Belgium started rolling their generation out. 

The grassroots development, impact of culture and historical aspects of footballing development of the smaller nations is something I find very interesting. 

Isn't the current youth generation supposed to have some stars though - keep hearing of Riechedly Bazoer, Anwar El Ghazi, Davy Klaassen and so on.

Klaus wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

poor management/setup? that shitster van gaal started the descent. hiddink's latest stint was a disaster, blind is to be determined.

something definitely happened after 2010. its hard to go from reaching the final of the world cup to losing three straight at euro 2012

Yeah, the setup in the national team has definitely been poor, but I was thinking more in terms of domestic talent development. Something has happened on club level in Dutch football, because we don't see these players coming through anymore. The problem is not that they don't get selected for the national team, it's that there are no better players to select.

Like so many countries, we missed the leap in grassroots development. We needed an overhaul like the Germans have done in the last 10-15 years, but everyone is still doing things the old way. On club level, Dutch teams have of course totally collapsed. More than half of the players in that '98 team were from Ajax or PSV. These days, talented youngsters move at a very early age to shit clubs like Chelsea and are ruined forever.