The Struggles of the Dutch National Team: Ronald Koeman’s Second Term as Coach

The Dutch national team was “nowhere” when her husband took over in 2018, says Bartina Koeman in the docuseries Koeman strength. In that first period, national coach Ronald Koeman managed to turn the negative sentiment around the Dutch team. He brought willpower, dynamism and renewed faith after dark years due to the good results. “He’s a repairman,” Bartina said, looking back.

Ronald Koeman will be on the sidelines on Tuesday evening in the Olympiastadion in Berlin. Like a repairman. But circumstances are different now, in his second term as national coach. Now he has to fix what went wrong under his responsibility, in the last group match at the European Championship against Austria.

Players look desperate. They don’t know exactly what to do. You can see it in their hand gestures, their questioning looks. They are pinned down, pushed to the side and forced to lose the ball there time and again. Difficult solutions are sought, simple playing options don’t present themselves. So Tijjani Reijnders makes a rush that comes to nothing, Lutsharel Geertruida tries unsuccessfully to outplay an opponent and Joey Veerman loses the ball time and again.

Even when Austria has possession of the ball, it is unclear what the Netherlands wants. The eighteenth minute is illustrative, when the Dutch team ends up in a refined Austrian combination game. Left winger Cody Gakpo applies fierce pressure when Austria builds up. The defense then moves the game to the other flank. Gakpo indicates that right winger Donyell Malen should also apply pressure there. Pressing the ball is a delicate matter, it only works if you do it collectively. Otherwise, an opponent can (easily) play through it.

That’s exactly what happens. Malen isn’t close enough, can’t apply pressure. The controlling midfielders also get stuck. You can see the hesitation in the Dutch team: should we all continue or not? The frustration about that is visible in Gakpo, who turns away angrily. The hesitation can also be seen in Reijnders, who, like Gakpo, applies high pressure. He looks behind him to see if others are following – they aren’t.

Austria easily plays football through that half-hearted pressure. Every ball contact is greeted with cheers – ‘hey, hey, hey’. In that painful phase for the Dutch team – generally seen as the founder of ‘total football’ in the 1970s with many position changes and fluent combination play – the team receives a lesson in modern, progressive attacking play. The Austrian display lasts more than a minute and a half.

Game identity

What kind of football do you want to play? What is your philosophy of play? In Austria, it is clear under the innovative coach Ralf Rangnick. They chase the opponent with a lot of energy and ‘high’ pressure, and play very directly towards the enemy goal. It is organised team football, without hesitation. Players from average European clubs such as SC Freiburg, VfL Wolfsburg and Sturm Graz can therefore, despite the difference in individual quality, be better than Oranje.

That playing identity at Oranje has been less clear since Koeman started his second term as national coach in March last year. Yes, in generalities. “We always assume attacking, creative football,” Koeman said at the end of May. But in what way exactly he wants to achieve this offensive football and with which playing principles (intentions with which a team plays), has never been clear.

It touches the core of coach Koeman. He is a realist, not an idealist. A pragmatist who can switch to a different style of play at the snap of a finger. That tactical flexibility helped Oranje in difficult periods last year. One moment more focused on defensive control, then again more attacking – depending on the opponent and the score. Against lesser countries that was sufficient.

A clear, well-thought-out playing style is currently lacking. Koeman is not a ‘forming’ national coach who hones in on a specific type of game. The nuance is that this is also more difficult with a national team than with a club because there is little training time – although Rangnick proves the opposite. The Dutch team also had a preparation of more than two weeks, during which a lot of training could finally be done. But there is no visible trend in the development of the playing style at this European Championship.

It is one of the shortcomings that will cause problems for Oranje on Tuesday. Players are constantly running after the ball, and they are not putting pressure on Austria. It is unclear who should pick up attacking midfielder Marcel Sabitzer, who is deeper than expected. Should central defender Virgil van Dijk pick him up, or should midfielder Jerdy Schouten go along? If he follows him, the spaces in midfield will become too big, Schouten says later.

That clever positioning of Austria in combination with their aggressive pressing pulls Oranje off balance. Right back Geertruida moves a little inwards to support the centre. As a result, a gap appears on the right – not coincidentally the flank from which the first goal against is created.

After twenty minutes, Koeman gestures: stand one-on-one at the back, so that they can put more pressure on the midfield. That message is mainly aimed at Van Dijk, who barely covers. That only works from the second half onwards. Koeman later says that the plan beforehand was to drop back “a little” – which turned out to be disastrous.

Progressive club trainers

The passive play of the Dutch team is remarkable, given the progressive trainers under whom several internationals play at their clubs. Gakpo, Van Dijk and Georginio Wijnaldum were formed at Liverpool by the extreme pressure and high tempo under Jürgen Klopp. Where Nathan Aké works at Manchester City with Pep Guardiola, the most influential trainer of this century with his positionally oriented total football.

Xavi Simons plays for RB Leipzig, a club in the German school Full throttle football. That line can be extended to the Eredivisie, with Geertruida who grew up at Feyenoord in the aggressive, attacking game under Arne Slot. Where Schouten and Veerman became champions at PSV with Peter Bosz, a coach who also plays forward with a lot of energy and pressure.

The game of Oranje is far removed from this type of football. That difference is clearly visible in last Friday’s match against France. Xavi Simons steps out several times to put pressure, as he is used to at RB Leipzig. Just like Gakpo against Austria, Simons reacts frustrated when others do not follow. “Hey!”, he shouts. Afterwards, Koeman is critical of Simons, because he stepped out several times, which created large spaces for France.

It raises the question of whether the national coach and players speak the same kind of football language. The question is also why Bosz managed to get Veerman into his power at PSV last season, where Koeman changed the playmaker after 35 minutes on Tuesday after a failed performance with sixteen losses of the ball.

When asked about the substitution, Koeman said in a distant tone on NOS that “something had to be done”. When the interviewer tells him that Veerman’s specialty is his ability to keep the ball, Koeman says: “I don’t have an answer to that, sorry. He trips over the ball once, he gives balls away. You have to ask him that. It is inexplicable to me.”

It is the second time in seventeen international matches that Koeman has made such a rigorous, early substitution: the same thing happened to Ajax midfielder Kenneth Taylor in March last year after 33 minutes against France. Just like Veerman now, he came out damaged. Apart from the poor play of both, it mainly shows that Koeman made an error in his choice of formation.

Perhaps the defeat against Austria (2-3) was in some sense inevitable. Something that had to happen to Koeman at some point: being tactically trumped by a coach with progressive ideas. The press conference in Berlin is coming to an end on Tuesday evening when Koeman cautiously looks ahead to the round of 16. He uses traditional coaching jargon, which indicates an outdated approach. “Then we will have to look at things from a different perspective.”

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