On air: Holland - "winning matches, not friends"
Post categories: World Cup 2010, World Cup Have Your Say
| 07:10 UK time, Wednesday, 7 July 2010
We talked about this on World Cup Have Your Say on Wednesday 7th July. Listen again to the programme.
That's how Gabriele Marcotti puts it, the morning after the Dutch got through to the World Cup final.
Holland beat Uruguay 3-2 in Cape Town; it's the first time they've got this far in 32 years.
There's a lot of comment about them not perhaps playing as flowing a style of "Total Football" as Dutch teams of old; Stuart Watt of ABC thinks it's "Effective, not total":
The 2010 Oranje vintage is more a mixture of the cynical and the pragmatic rather than the beautiful. But it just might be the recipe for success.
But if they come away from the World Cup with an unprecedented win, does it matter?
This article in the UK's Independent talks about the shadow cast by the famous Johan Cruyff team of the 1970s; this writer talks about a "contest with history" for Bert Marwijk's team, as well as a contest with the opponents on the pitch.
Van Warwijk himself says - as quoted on the New York Times football blog:
"I understand that people want to see attractive football," van Marwijk said. "But if you play too expansively, you stand a good chance to lose and then you go home. And that we don't want to do."
How do you feel about the lack of Total Football? Do you think the World Cup is poorer for Dutch pragmatism? Or are you happy they are closer to a winning formula?
