Group B: Netherlands vs Germany discussion

VivaStPauli wrote:BTW if Netherlands beat Germany
Denmark beat Portugal
and then Germany beats Denmark
and Netherlands beat Portugal...

...and they all have the same goal difference... Would the universe implode?

leemhuis wrote:Ok, enough pessimism. Portugal played as well as Germany and it probably should have been a draw. We are better than Portugal on an average day. We had a very bad day against Denmark and Denmark may be better than most thinks.

donttreadonred wrote:

Kingofeverythingclassy wrote:My Problem with RVP & I hope you understand this since you are an Arsenal fan is that he drops way too deep,sometimes as a cover for LB sometimes at DM against a team like Denmark when we dont need it. That makes it a 4-6-0 Formation & Sneijder getting into threatening positions has no one to pass the ball. That & since Huntelaar is a brilliant Header,it adds variety to the attack.

My reaction for hating RVP was probably because of the massive over-rating by the English Media building his as some sort of saviour. Its safe to say he dissapointed inside the box,however his link-up play,partically with Robben & Sneijder were excellent.

Sneijder as DLP is being talked about a lot. You saw that past for Huntelaar,Sneijder has the best long passes in World Football,5 Star Quality. But Sneijder at a DM kinda role will make the defensive unstable. But if a victory is a must,that has to be taken.

Say at 50th minute if it is 0-0. There can be no playing safe this is a must win match. I think RVP at RW will be better since Van Der Weil does not overlap & Robben being left footed is stranded 1 vs 2 & that makes it very predictable. He played on the left against England & was great & it allows him to whip in crosses for Huntelaar. Having 2 Inverted wingers is bad for Hunter.

Hunter is not a Link Up ST,that is why I mentioned Kuyt because he is a good crosser.

If a 1 DM formation had to be tried. It has to De Jong & not a Super slow & Useless Van Bommel against a fast & creative Ozil. Last day Mark,who was out of gas after 80 minutes should have been subbed out & not De Jong.

First of all, I'm certainly no Arsenal fan, but I do rate Van Persie highly. Not because he is a stereotypical striker, but because he can play nearly any position in attack and be one of the most dangerous attackers in the world on his day. That said, you are certainly correct about his positional discipline, or lack thereof. He’s used to having a VERY free role at Arsenal, and this makes him prone to dropping deeper if he doesn’t feel like he’s getting service. He does this to try to get into the game and force the issue, but you are correct in your assessment that it cuts the head off of the Dutch attack. In that case, you are correct to want Huntelaar up top as he is the prototypical “predator in the box” striker. That’s why I think Van Persie alongside/slightly deeper than Huntelaar could work.

As you mention, Sneijder can be one of the best long-passers in World Football. That was the reasoning behind my suggestion of him as a deeper play maker (Xabi Alonso) role. England are taking a similar approach with Gerrard this tournament. He’s being played as a more traditional CM, instead of his usual CAM. I understand they’re not exactly the same type of player (and I tend to rate Gerrard’s defending a little higher), but it’s the first example that comes to mind. Your concerns of defensive instability are valid, and I believe I mentioned something about it being capable of failing spectacularly. The point of that lineup would be to force the issue by putting your best attacking players on the pitch if the Dutch are in a position where they’re chasing a match or need to score. (I don’t need to remind you that winning out is effectively the only way they will advance at this point.)

The Dutch really need Van Bommel to turn the clock back a few years for the next couple of games. De Jong is a good DM, but he’s very limited in his attacking and passing abilities. He’s almost solely a destroyer on the pitch, winning the ball and making the short pass to Sneijder/Van Boommel/etc. In the typical Dutch setup with 4 attackers ahead of him and Van Bommel, he performs his job of sitting deeper to shield the defense very well, and it is probably even more important this tournament. However, if they’re chasing a game and need to add creativity, he’s likely to be subbed out first. Against Denmark, he had barely seen the ball in the first 60 minutes. I had expected him to come off from half-time.

As a Liverpool supporter, I’m a huge fan of Kuyt’s and he certainly performs some roles very well. However, he’s not the best crosser of the ball. He also doesn’t have a great first touch. The advantage of Kuyt comes in his willingness to track back and win the ball, as well as his knack for getting into good positions in the final third. Until this season, he had been the player for Liverpool who regularly got those “sloppy” goals in the box. (I would refer you to the game at Anfield against ManU in the 2010-2011 season. He scored a hat-trick of tap-ins. I would be more likely to play him with RVP upfront than Huntelaar, because Huntelaar tends to perform that role when he is on the pitch.

team.dfb.de: Manuel, the second part of the French Open final is under way as we speak. You’re a great tennis fan yourself. Who do you keep your fingers crossed for, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic?

Manuel Neuer: Djokovic, actually. I quite like the way he plays and how he presents himself off the court.

team.dfb.de: You used to be tennis player yourself. What was your style? Like Djokovic, with a powerful drive and attack on your mind? Or like Nadal?

Neuer: Neither of them are defensive players. True, Rafa is essentially a base-liner and doesn’t often come up to the net, but he knows how to dominate a match. The difference between the two is that perhaps there’s a little more variation to Djokovic’s game.

team.dfb.de: You dropped tennis at the age of fourteen – a difficult decision to take?

Neuer: Absolutely, but the dual burden of football and tennis was simply getting too much: on weekday afternoons, I went to two trainings, first football, then tennis, and on weekends I played football in the morning and turned up late for tennis later in the day, so I could only play doubles. It was getting too difficult to reconcile the two, so eventually I made the cut.

team.dfb.de: Was this a conscious kind of career move? Because you had a feeling that football would get you further?

Neuer: Calling it a "career move" would be taking it too far. It was just that sport was getting in the way of school, which I definitely didn’t mind as much as my parents did (laughs). They told me it was better for me to drop tennis. At the time I resented that, but today I’m grateful they made me do it.

team.dfb.de: Do you sometimes miss playing tennis?

Neuer: Oh, I do play once in a while, with friends or team-mates.

team.dfb.de: Any serious opponent?

Neuer: Oliver Bierhoff is said to be quite good, Andreas Köpke knows what a racket and ball are for, and Philipp Lahm is quite a good player.

team.dfb.de: From tennis to football. You became a goalkeeper, and quite a good one at that! You just need to read the papers after the Portugal match…

Neuer: I know how to rate my own performances. And anyway, what really counts for me is what my coaches and goalkeeper coaches tell me, not articles in the press. We analyse matches together, discussing whether I could or should have done things differently in given situations, whether I did or didn’t make the right choices. In the game against Portugal, I was not constantly tested…

team.dfb.de: Yes, but Ronaldo’s shot at goal in the 81st minute was not easy to stop, was it?

Neuer: Correct, but before that there were some pretty difficult set-pieces, where I had a hard time getting a hand to the ball, or swerved-in corner-kicks I could only fist away. Ronaldo’s was actually the first “real” shot at goal. It’s not easy for a keeper to have to wait so long for the first tricky ball.

team.dfb.de: In the 87th minute, Silvestre Varela appeared unmarked in front of goal - how hard was it to stop him from scoring?

Neuer: The hardest thing was that the situation should have been defused much earlier; I mean Ronaldo was lucky to be given a chance to lay that ball back at all. But as a goalie you’ve got to expect the unexpected, and I automatically tried to narrow down the angle, forcing Varela wide. His shot went where it really hurts – but that did not matter to me. The ball didn’t go in, full stop.

team.dfb.de: Would you say this is one of the things you had to get used to at FC Bayern – only rarely being in the thick of things but still having to concentrate 100 percent at all times?

Neuer: Yes, I really had to get used to that. While there had been matches like that with Schalke or with the national team, in my pre-Munich days there were very few occasions where I had practically nothing to do! In the first half of the Bundesliga season, for example, there were a great number of matches where I didn’t have to intervene at all until very late in the game.

team.dfb.de: In a nutshell – anybody can do great saves, but real class…

Neuer: I’d rather continue this phrase by saying ‘but the real challenge is for a goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet even if for 89 minutes you’ve had nothing to do.’ Believe it or not, I prefer it that way, ‘cause this means your own team dominates play big-time, doesn’t it?

team.dfb.de: Comparing the situation now with your first World Cup match in South Africa against Australia – has anything changed for you?

Neuer: Personally, I don’t think I’ve changed. What has is my status, my internal standing if you like. What I say carries more weight now, that’s the greatest difference. As far as my goalkeeping is concerned, I keep trying to project confidence and security and, if possible, assist with build-up play by speeding things up.

team.dfb.de: Do you keep an eye on how and where your team-mates are positioned, where on the pitch Germany might be numerically superior? For example, if the opposition take a corner, are you checking where our own strikers or midfielders are?

Neuer: There is no cut-and-dried answer to that question. In some situations I just know that a quick, long throw just won’t be called for, so all I do is concentrate on catching or parrying the ball. Having said that, the qualifying match against Turkey was a wonderful counter-example: from the corner of my eye I saw that their left-back was standing so out of position that I just had to throw the ball to Thomas Müller who was hovering up front. From there to Mario Gomez scoring was a matter of seconds. As a goalkeeper I always think about developing the game further. But the key thought will always be to have the ball and secure it. That’s my prime obligation, everything else is just a nice-to-have item.

team.dfb.de: How do you think will "modern" goalkeeping look like in 30 years’ time?

Neuer: I don’t think there will be any far-reaching changes at all. We might see keepers moving even further up-field, say 25-30 meters away from goal, to receive and distribute balls, just as I do sometimes. But I don’t think we’ll ever be some kind of 11th field player, dribbling or getting involved in offensive play.

team.dfb.de: Let’s preview Wednesday’s match against the Netherlands. You have special ties to our neighbours, haven’t you?

Neuer: Yes, I grew up in Gelsenkirchen-Buer, in the heart of (the German federal state of) North-Rhine-Westphalia, so we didn’t have far to drive to the Dutch border. In fact, quite often we went there on holiday, to the island of Ameland for example, which was a popular destination for our parish youth group. Sun and sand, lots of football, three weeks of bliss! But talking of ties to the Netherlands, don’t forget the Dutch team-mates I’ve had – quite a lot of them at Schalke, and now of course there’s Arjen Robben at FC Bayern.

team.dfb.de: Your fan’s take on the sporting rivalry between the two neighbouring nations?

Neuer: I can still remember playing in an Under-16 youth exhibition match in the Schalke Parkstadion just before a Germany vs. Netherlands international. And it became apparent to me that for players and fans on either side, such matches are something special.

team.dfb.de: Tell us something about Manuel Neuer the supporter. Back then, were you true to your level-headed self or rather the hot-blooded type?

Neuer: The former, to be honest. But the beauty of it is, football supporters are one of a kind, no matter whether you’ve got a degree or have barely made it to C-levels, are rich or poor, young or old. It’s a world with no hierarchies, where social status doesn’t mean anything. But I wasn’t much of ring leader or anything whipping up the crowd, I just went with the flow.

team.dfb.de: The Netherlands have a superb attacking force, with Robbie van Persie and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar top scorers in their respective leagues –are you looking forward to what promises to be a special challenge?

Neuer: Sure, we are fully aware of that, but that apart, I’m just looking forward to meeting the Dutch in a tournament context.

urbaNRoots wrote:Van der Vaart: "I only count three amazing players in Germany squad. Özil, Götze and Schweinsteiger."