Holland vs England sees two teams in transition, both with work to do
Upon seeing the team picked for him by the selectors ahead of the 1902 Ashes Test at Old Trafford, the England cricket captain AC MacLaren is reputed to have responded: “My god, look what they’ve sent me this time.” Gareth Southgate may not quite be at that level yet. But as he scans the dressing room at the Johan Cruyff Arena ahead of Friday’s evening’s friendly against Holland, he may well be wondering, with
his customary quizzical expression, how it all should have come to this.
With all due respect to the likes of Alfie Mawson, James Tarkowski, Nick Pope and Jake Livermore, the squad that Southgate will take to Amsterdam this week is less a golden generation and more a lead balloon, the sort of party to inspire neither hope at home nor fear abroad. Indeed, perhaps the kindest thing you could say about this squad is that if the intention is to dampen expectations ahead of this summer’s Russian examination, it is already doing an excellent job.
You could bicker and quibble, I suppose, about certain selections. Is Livermore really a better bet than Ross Barkley? Lewis Cook than Theo Walcott? Mawson and Tarkowski than Gary Cahill or Chris Smalling? And when there are so few genuinely international-class centre-halves about, you could certainly question Southgate’s determination to play a formation that requires three of them.
But really, all this is bumph, bluster, bar-room barracking. The fact is that this - injuries to Harry Kane and Ryan Bertrand notwithstanding - is more or less what we have right now. And this, as a footballing nation, is more or less where we are: a sprinkling of genuine attacking talents bulked out with foam, newspaper, polystyrene curls and those little bags of air they use to pack delicate ornaments. And as England line up against the three-time World Cup finalists, perhaps the only real cause for optimism is that their opponents are having it much, much worse.
In the same way that England cut the silhouette of a fallen giant, a Fighting Temeraire being tugged to her last berth, the rich and storied Oranje brand incites just a fraction of the fervour and fever it did in its pomp. Failure to qualify for two international tournaments in succession has catalysed a sort of gibbering existential crisis within Dutch football that few genuinely believe Ronald Koeman’s side are capable of banishing.
The reasons being proffered for Holland’s swift decline are as manifold as they are speculative. A retreat into nostalgia, a refusal to innovate, a failure of youth development and the simple financial imperative of operating as a small nation in a global marketplace have all been suggested as possible factors. What is certainly true is that the geyser of talent that once gushed forth from these polders and deltas has slowed to a dribble. Sacrilegious as it might feel to describe this as a second-rate fixture, offer most neutrals a choice between this match, Argentina v Italy, Germany v Spain and even France v Colombia, and they will vote with their eyes.
Koeman, for his part, is sifting through the debris of the last golden generation. The likes of Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder are gone and not coming back, and even the mooted return of Robin van Persie - now 34, greying at the temples and still occasionally banging them in for Feyenoord - demonstrates a collective failure to replace what has been lost. Much-hyped talents like Luuk de Jong, Davy Klaassen and Bas Dost,
meanwhile, have flattered to deceive.
A team in transition, then, and one that will almost certainly be long and painful. Yet even in its darkest hour, this is a Dutch side with the potential to wound. Dick Advocaat led the team to five straight wins at the end of 2017, even if - in terms of World Cup qualification - the real damage had been done much earlier. And there were signs of life in the friendly wins over Scotland and Romania, Advocaat’s last two games before handing the reins to Koeman.
The spine of a decent team is still there: Virgil van Dijk, Stefan de Vrij and teenage Ajax prodigy Matthijs de Ligt in defence, Gini Wijnaldum and Kevin Strootman in midfield, Memphis Depay and the exciting Justin Kluivert - who could be in line for an international debut - up front. If England allow them time and space on the ball, you suspect they will not be the only group of young males getting rapidly intoxicated in Amsterdam this weekend.
Will we learn anything? Maybe, although any residual function these fixtures may hold generally evaporates with the first volley of half-time substitutions. Southgate will want to drill his expected 3-4-3 system, hone it, groove his attacking combinations, and the performance rather than the result will probably be what interests him. Koeman, too, has plenty to prove after his sharp decline at Everton earlier this season. Above all, then, this is a night for introspection, for experimentation, as two nations pick through the modest threads of their fraying football culture, and try to fashion something vaguely wearable out of them.