De Oranje are not the lonely fruits … any longer (Fat Eck’s EURO 2004 Diary, Match Day 15) PART 1

Saturday 26th June 2004
Estadio Algarve, Faro-Loule
Quarter-final 3

Netherlands … 0 Sweden …0 (after extra time, Netherlands win 5-4 on penalties)

“Aw man - he’s keiching himelf. He’s TOTALLY gonnae miss. This is gawin’ oor the bar. (Ibrahimovic misses) Oooooh yes - tell’t ye! Ye could see it in his eyes - he wisnae sure whit ee wiz daein. Here comes Reiziger - Aw naw he looks totally panic-striken as well - he’s gonnae sklaff this .. I’m tellin ye he’s nae … (Reiziger scores) Oh. Erm, nice one. ” So went my patter round at my very hospitable mate’s very hospitable flat as we sat sinking Czech Republic beers and a smorgasbord of snacks while watching a seminal moment in world football history. Ye just never can tell - although it never stops me trying - what these guys are going to do as they place the ball and take a step or ten back.

I mean, Cocu looked cool as a Cocucumber but he pinged his off the post. Olof Mellberg, on the other hand, was obviously bricking it and alowed Van Der Sar to save. Arnje Roben was hard to judge but he slotted his away nae bother - the penalty which may have lifted the final weight from the backs of soccers’ great underachievers. Spain may be renowned for never producing the goods but they underachieve so completely that very rarely look like potential champions of any tournament. Holland, on the other hand, frequently seem to be on the brink of genius - are actually tearing leser teams apart and going toe-to-toe with the big sides - when peanlties come along and stop them dead.

I fear for teh Dutch in this tournament but it’s not, for change, because they lack the pragmatism to cope with a shoot-out. It’s because winning their first ever such shoot-out, after leaving the 98 world cup and the 1992, 96 and 2000 European Championships by this method, seemed to become an end in itself last night. Wearing all-white (with strangley salmon-pink tops to their socks?!) the KNVB finally surrendered it’s “beautiful losing” snobbery to the hard fact of winning fitbaw matches whatever way you can. But the players then had their weans out on the pitch, doing an extended lap of honour - Holland looked like they’d already won a cup. I really think they shoudl have been holding something back - especially when a rampant Portugal await in what could be a CLASSIC semi-final on Wednesday.

For Bluenoses it was all about Advocaat versus Larsson and, with the confused regard in which the manager of the Netherlands is still held by the Rangers support, some of us wanted the Dutch to win and some of us felt we’d be proved correct if Advocaat lost this tussle of the ex-Old Firmers.

Me? Personally? Well, I’d stated earlier in the tournament that continued glory for Larsson actually complimented Rangers - if he could bang in three goals in a European Championship finals we had less to be ashamed of in losing a few trophies to him in Scotland. But I’m one of the Gers fans who has no real lingering problem with Advocaat. So last night for me was about a man who, as a Gers manager, gave me some great days and nights up against a man who, as a Celtic striker, had ruined a few weekends for me down the last seven years. Sod the lateral thinking about Larsson - my big fat belly told me I wanted Holland to win.

And I’m quite sure there were a few gut-reaction bhoys and ghirls out there who choked at the sight of their recently departed messiah losing on penalties as Arjen Robben ran deliriously up to a sea of oranje with a big Union Jack (Charlton Athletic as it turned out) right at the front of the celebrating Dutch support. It could almost have been Giovanni Van Bronckhurst celebrating the opening goal of the 2000 Double Dutch Scottish Cup final. In fact, Gio was there … OH, LEAVE IT OUT, ECK! Talking about Old Firm football right now seems so, well, “smutty” almost.

As far as the rest of the “neutral” world was concerned, this was a battle between Larsson and the other legendary striker on the pitch - Ruud van Nistelrooy. They ended with honours even - both hitting the woodwork during the course of the game, both scoring their spot-kicks. But the game itself was somewhat dry. The thrill was in seeing a Dutch side finally get the penaly monkey off their back.

Yesterday we quoted Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger’s Tor! as the book to read if you want to contextualise Otto Reghhagel in German football. Today David Winner’s Brilliant Orange is the only publication which will allow any English-speaking reader to fully comprehend what the spot-kick competition means in Holland’s footballing history.

Basically, since Johann Neekkens smacked that one right down the middle of Sepp Maier’s goal in the first minute of the 1974 World Cup final, the Dutch have let their hatred of the Germans overtake their ability to convert more than their opponents in those mini- games-within-a-big-game from 12 yards out.

See, that legandary team of thirty summers past didn’t just want to beat the Germans in Munich on their way to becoming champions of the planet - they wanted to humiliate Beckenbauer, Muller and co - they wanted to take some sort of mocking revenge on the entire German populus by running rings round their best players.

It didn’t happen. Germany let Holland have the ball as much as they wanted, outside the German box, and only borowed it for long enough to score the two goals which got the hosts back in the lead. That pragmatic doggedness which produces results but few friends came to symbolize the German football team over the next three decades as they lifted more trophies, got to final after final, but never prduced the kind of dazzling, pretty skills of a Brazil or France … or Holland.

Rather than face up to the fact they’d blown it aganst the nation which invaded them during the second World war, the Dutch manufactured a retrospective victory from the same match - the the subsuquent thmyth of morally superior football. Thus, while teh Germans have missed two shoot-out penalties in the subsequent 30 years (Stieleke 82 and Hoenes 76 - never let a guy called Uli take a spot-kick) the Dutch have arrogantly declared themselves to be above the raw functionalism of a penalty shoot-out. They “won” that 1974 World cup final by playing the “lovelier” footbal and Germany have been continually “losing” ever since by winning things through diligence, aplication, physicality and on vulgar penalties - why would de Oranje want to throw away that superiority?

JON ME IN PART 2 - BELOW THIS ONE, ON THE HOME PAGE - AND I’LL TELL YA!!!
(Exciting isn’t it!!! Just like a penalty shoot-out! … erm - okay - maybe not - but just gonnae click on the second part anyway - PLEASE!)