Van Basten On His Bike After Euro 2008

December 4th, 2007 | by: Daryl | Comments Off

Netherlands boss Marco van Basten and his assistant John van’t Schip will be stepping down after Euro 2008. It’s been an interesting spell for the former AC Milan striker. He had no first team managerial experience when he took the Dutch job, but had spent a few years studying coaching and also some experience with the Ajax reserve team. What he brought to the national team was a big name whose achievements on the field demanded the respect of players.

That’s translated into van Basten being unafraid to drop big name players who he thinks are failing to pull their weight. He famously clashed with Ruud van Nistelrooy more than once, leading to the Real Madrid striker’s international retirement in January this year. But things have been patched up and RvN was back and scoring in the Euro 2008 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Albania recently.

Clarence Seedorf is another big name that’s been been in and out of favour with van Basten. Other players have fallen out of favour and never worn oranje again. The likes of Roy Makaay, Mark van Bommel and Edgar Davids were more or less discarded.

Hard to say whether van Basten’s hard line approach has been good or bad for the Dutch national team. On one hand they are a team that always seem to have some sort of drama going on and maybe van Basten could have been more tactful and kept things a bit calmer. On the other hand maybe his determination not to bow before big name players will help the team in the long run.

World Cup 2006 ended strangely for van Basten’s Holland team with a 1-0 defeat to Portugal in the second round that featured four red cards. They qualified from their Euro 2008 group in second place with some scrappy displays but now find themselves in the Euro 2008 Group of Certain Death alongside France, Italy and Romania.

Van Basten’s final legacy will likely be written according to what happens in Austria and Switzerland next summer, but how do Dutch fans feel about him so far? Wish he was staying or glad he’s going? And who would you like to see replace him?

For more on this, visit our always top quality Netherlands Blog.