Netherlands (National Football)

Spain went into their match against the Netherlands Friday with a bit of a reputation to defend. For years, their tiki-taka was seen as the very best football had to offer. At times almost mesmerising, this technical style of football looked unbeatable.

In the final of the 2010 World Cup, when the Netherlands last faced Spain, the Dutch gave it their all. But even outright aggression could not stop Spain’s all-conquering machine. While “Oranje” managed to take the game into extra time, their defeat eventually seemed inevitable.

Even stars like Robin van Persie and Wesley Sneijder must have felt chanceless. They came so close to winning the World Cup, the highest honour in football. But how could they be expected to top what Spain had brought to the world of football?

And what to think about Arjen Robben, who broke through Spain’s high defensive line halfway through the second half only to see his attempt stopped by Iker Casillas’ right toe. As if it wasn’t meant to be, he failed to convert his clear-cut chance.

Flash forward four years and it was the same Robben, along with the aforementioned Van Persie and Sneijder, who got to dismantle Spain’s seemingly invincible footballing machine—piece, by piece, by piece.

A lot had happened between 2010 and tonight’s match, where the Dutch avenged their 2010 defeat with a 5-1 victory to open their World Cup. Arjen Robben scored the winning goal in the Champions League, and Robin van Persie won the Premier League with Manchester United. Louis van Gaal had taken over from Bert van Marwijk—the Netherlands' manager back in 2010.

But as it turned out, the biggest transformation had probably happened within the Spanish camp. That’s what made it all the more amazing: As if the parts had gotten rusty, the tiki-taka machine stopped working against Oranje. 

It must have been Robben’s, Van Persie’s and Sneijder’s pleasure to take the Spanish machine apart. What turned out to be impossible four years ago, happened tonight—and then some. Revenge can hardly taste sweeter.

Van Gaal, once the manager of Andres Iniesta and Xavi at Barcelona, played his part as well. Showing his dedication and never-say-die attitude, he had even crafted an unusual 5-3-2 system for the Dutch, all to stand a chance against the reigning world champions. 

It turned out to be the masterstroke that allowed Robben, Van Persie and Sneijder to shine. Perfectly accommodating “The Golden Triangle,” Van Gaal’s newfound system got the best out of his best players.

As it turned out, it was never about “standing a chance.” It was about footballing history taking an unexpected turn. As we will undoubtedly find out later, it might have even been about the end of an era.

With halftime approaching and Spain leading 1-0 through Xabi Alonso's penalty, the Dutch needed some World Cup inspiration.

They needed somebody to do something special and get their 2014 campaign started.

Daley Blind produced the pass. Robin van Persie produced a magnificent header to beat Iker Casillas and send the Dutch hordes into celebration.

Here's a wider view of the goal:

And here's the assist from Blind's perspective, to underline just what a great pass it was:

Daley Blind will be a United player very soon! Here's his brilliant World Cup assist again https://t.co/mv1lT56xn6

— Premier League Vines (@VinesPremLeague) August 30, 2014

Van Persie's manager Louis van Gaal will be looking for more of the same when he takes over at Manchester United this summer.

The Netherlands squad in Brazil is inexperienced and relatively unfancied, which—the Dutch being the Dutch—seems to be seen as a positive.

Although the Netherlands reached the final of the last World Cup, there were those who saw only disgrace in their performance: They weren’t Dutch enough, and the chest-high challenge by Nigel de Jong on Xabi Alonso in the final became seen as the emblem of the unpleasant cynicism that had been allowed to dominate their play.

This World Cup has become as much about re-establishing their identity as it is about winning.

Since the 1970s, as Simon Kuper argued in Issue 0 of the Blizzard (subscription required), there has been a sense of the Dutch as a team that played beautiful football—and lost.

They went down 2-1 to West Germany in the 1974 World Cup final and went down 3-1 to Argentina in 1978, beaten both times by host nations who played a more muscular style of football. The Dutch insisted that didn’t matter: They preferred to play with quixotic beauty than to deal in something as base as results.

Five or six years ago, that changed. The build-up to the last World Cup spoke of a new pragmatism. The Nike adverts before the tournament appealed to a sensibility far removed from Dutch tradition.

"Tears of joy are made of sweat," said one. "Destroy egos, starting with your own," said another (h/t David Winner of the Telegraph).

But the new approach still brought a final defeat—against Spain, against whom the Netherlands begin this World Cup campaign on Friday.

The revulsion against that pragmatism—allied to Louis van Gaal’s disappointment last time he was Netherlands manager, when they failed to qualify for the 2002 World Cup—led to him jettisoning a number of senior players and looking to build for the future.

There appeared to be green shoots in qualifying, as Paul Wilson of the Guardian noted: "Van Gaal must be doing something right, because Holland were the first European side to qualify for the finals in Brazil."

During qualifying, everything seemed to be moving in the right direction. The Dutch topped their group comfortably, playing a 4-2-3-1 that, if not awakening memories of Total Football or even Van Gaal's Ajax side of the early 1990s, at least took Dutch football back towards its historical principles.

Two injuries, though, have hit them hard. Kevin Strootman had emerged as almost the iconic player of Van Gaal’s new vision, a powerful but deft player at the back of midfield. Without him and Rafael van der Vaart, one of the few experienced players to survive the cull, Van Gaal seems to have lost faith with the tactical system that saw the Dutch through qualification.

In the warm-up games, he has experimented with a 4-3-1-2 and a 3-4-1-2, the latter apparently after being inspired by Feyenoord, whose young side finished second in the Eredivisie last season.

It remains unclear whether Van Gaal will opt for the back four or a back three against Spain, but it may be that he will reason that adding the extra midfielder is the best way to try to frustrate Spain’s passing game—with De Jong the only certainty, sitting in front of the defensive line.

The front three, meanwhile, are all experienced: Wesley Sneijder sitting deep behind an asymmetric pairing of Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie.

They switch over, but Robben tends to start from the left—rather than the right as he does for Bayern Munich—with Van Persie often dropping deep, looking to link with the midfield and release Robben with his pace.

"I don't think opponents will defend man on man against Van Persie, Robben and Sneijder," Van Gaal said at a press conference this week. "That's why our new system is going to be hard to play against."

So, although this is part of the process of rebuilding the Dutch team to a Dutch model, it seems likely to begin with an attempt to pack the midfield and prevent Spain from playing while threatening on the counter-attack.

At least, though, it should be less cynical than the Dutch of four years ago.

Think Philipp Lahm will be the only trained full-back to also feature in midfield at the 2014 World Cup?

Think again.

Ajax product Daley Blind—son of club legend Danny Blind—is already providing Louis van Gaal with impressive positional flexibility, and it’s possible the 24-year-old, who was recently named Dutch Footballer of the Year, could be following the Netherlands manager to Manchester United in July.

Late last month, both Jamie Anderson of the Express and the Manchester Evening News linked Blind with a move to Old Trafford, and while it has long been thought his path may follow that of Van Gaal, who coached his father in the 1990s, his first piece of business will be helping an underrated Dutch side achieve some semblance of success in Brazil.

To that end, it’s likely he’ll be deployed in various roles against group-stage opponents Spain, Australia and Chile.

In a pre-tournament match at home to Ghana, Blind functioned as a left-sided wing-back in a 5-3-2 formation and provided useful width against a side that played considerably more narrow. But four days later against Wales, he was running the show in the centre of the park—completing 90 per cent of his passes, contributing seven tackles and touching the ball more often than anyone else on the pitch, according to WhoScored.com.

Given his history as a full-back and recent transition to midfield, which was helped along by Ajax boss Frank de Boer, the comparisons to Lahm are inevitable.

Both players are masterful distributors of the ball, and both possess the smarts that have inspired their club managers to modify their positions.

Blind, for example, made an eye-popping 76 interceptions in 29 Eredivisie matches for Ajax, as per Squakwa, and of the more than 2,000 passes he completed over the course of the season, nearly two-thirds moved the ball forward.

Given the absence of midfielder Kevin Strootman through injury, it may fall to Blind to orchestrate the Netherlands’ possession game at the World Cup. That is, of course, unless he’s asked to play a significant role in a counterattacking system, as he did against Ghana.

No doubt he’ll be an asset wherever he operates, and as Van Gaal continues to take to him, the chances of an Old Trafford switch become more and more likely as well.

Follow @jerradpeters

Netherlands team-mates Arjen Robben and Bruno Martins Indi have clashed in training ahead of the World Cup in Brazil.

The players came together during a practice match, with Martins Indi putting a strong tackle in on Robben, leading the Bayern Munich superstar to kick out at the player later in the session. 

David Kent of the Mail Online reported that the two players had clashed during a training match, but Robben had appeared unhurt after the defender's tackle on him. 

Kent writes that Martins Indi spoke about the altercation to the press, but Robben did not comment. The Feyenoord player said:

"Arjen is a good dribbler. I thought he fell needlessly once. We had a little head-to-head."

When one reporter said he had seen irritation between Martins Indi and Robben, the centre-back replied, per Kent:

"You saw right."

Both players are key for Louis van Gaal at the World Cup finals and will need to heal any rift with immediate effect.

The manager recently spoke about his nation's chances of success and will need his best players to be unified and on form.

Miguel Delaney of The Independent quoted LvG saying:

"There are eight to 10 teams better than we are. The chances of reaching the quarter-finals are 20 per cent.”

However, Spanish coach Vicente del Bosque spoke about Van Gaal's team and how much he respected them as competitors.

Dutch football writer and Bleacher Report columnist Elko Born tweeted:

Martins Indi's profile could be about to increase for English football fans, as Manchester United have targeted the defender to replace Nemanja Vidic, per James Robson of Manchester Evening News.

The player has become an important component in the Dutch defence during the qualifying campaign and any disaffection with Robben playing in front of him would surely be counterproductive.

The Dutch have had issues before with their players behind the scenes at international tournaments, and they will move quickly to nip this episode in the bud.

Robben has been in strong form recently, with the player being key in the Netherlands' 2-0 friendly win against Wales in Amsterdam. 

He scored one and assisted another, showing how deadly he might be in Brazil, per BBC Sport.

If the Netherlands are to give Van Gaal the perfect send-off as he begins his adventure in English football, Robben will need to be happy and content with those around him. He has shown in the past that he can be temperamental, but this will be his final chance to shine at a World Cup.

However, Martins Indi is one for the present and future, and he is a potential leader for Netherlands at this tournament and beyond. He is ready to make the next step in his career as an international defender, and it is unlikely that this incident will affect his preparations.