Your Dutch Eredivisie 09/10 Preview

Can AZ do it again?

(by Joep Smeets, our figurative man in Amsterdam)

“An optimist is nothing but a poorly informed pessimist”
- Theo Maassen

Another year of Dutch football is upon us. It will be another year of you not recognizing the teams Ajax and PSV play, which will make their late season defeats to a bunch of no-names all the more surprising and depressing. sometime in march, Ajax will lose to Sparta again and a few weeks later PSV will struggle away at Willem II or some other team hovering around 13^th place with s**t to play for. There are two ways – one horribly optimistic and the other one terribly realistic – of explaining what the Dutch call nivellering, the diminishing disparity in the Eredivisie. And the bottom clubs are not getting any better.

I’ve written before about last year’s league and how it played out, so I am not going to recap beyond that it was the first time in 50-something years at least one of Ajax, PSV or Feyenoord did not finish among the two best. AZ won it partly because they rebounded admirably from their horrific previous season, partly because everybody else, Ajax most spectacularly, tried desperately not to.

van Gaal: tough to replace

So far, AZ have managed to keep their young and talented squad together. Their only two losses, however, were major ones. Midfielder and Dutch international De Zeeuw is off to Amsterdam, but more importantly Louis Van Gaal, widely credited for his ability to work with young players left for more Bavarian pastures and was succeeded by Ronald Koeman. That would be the same Ronald Koeman who was last seen leaving Valencia under cover of night carrying two comically large bags of money with hand painted dollar signs on them.

Over the past two years, AZ has proven to be pretty fickle, finishing twelfth and first with pretty much the same squad. It will be interesting to see how they will pick up the change from a disciplinarian like van Gaal to the laissez-faire approach of a man of whom Valencia’s Joaquin once said he cared more about wine than tactics.

AZ is not the only team who will start this season with a different coach as last year. Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, Utrecht, Vitesse, Roda, Heracles, Sparta, Willem II, NEC will all have different managers for the media to beat up on for probably not living up to their respective expectations.

But for all this teams in the Eredivisie play to win no matter how bad their chances of success, the league is unpredictable, fun, and most importantly the most exciting talents of tomorrow play in Holland now. A preview wouldn’t be complete without them, so here goes.

I was almost sure last season would be the last season Ibrahim Affelay would play in Holland. It should have been. But it wasn’t. Young, fast, a goal threat from long range, eerily similar but less annoying than Marseille’s Hatem Ben Arfa, Ibi’s got everything to make it big. He supports young Swedish striker Toivonen, succesfull at the youth European cup in his own country this summer. His youth national team partner Marcus Berg made the step from Groningen to HSV already, and if Ola Toivonen plays the next season the way he’s done since joining PSV last winter, he could be on his way out, too.

Kevin Strootman still plays for Sparta, I think, but AZ and Utrecht are considering paying up for a young midfielder who is mature beyond his age and has been reminding people of Cocu in a very respectable first season.

Sebastien Pocognoli: can do better than Everton

AZ, meanwhile, have a splendid left back in Belgian Pocognoli, who drew interest from Everton already but is aiming higher. El Hamdaoui, who didn’t cut it at Spurs, has been scoring a lot and often spectacularly especially when paired with Dembele and Martens, two more young Belgians. Their equally young defensive centre, consisting of Mexican Hector Moreno and Finnish Niklas Moisander is very promising aswell.

My Ajax supporting friends finally have something to cheer about when Gregory van der Wiel, a young dynamic right back is on the team list. A better technique than most fullbacks, stamina to cover the entire wing for a game, passing, vision and very few problems defensively, van der Wiel will most likely start for Holland in South Africa. Famed for its academy, The current Ajax generation is far from one of the best but still produces players like van der Wiel and Belgians Verthongen and Alderweireld.

Feyenoord’s financial troubles have urged them to thrust a lot of youngsters from their succesfull youth program into the first team, pretty much just to see who sticks. Leroy Fer and Georgino Wijnaldum have long proven themselves, and if Jonathan de Guzman returns from a long injury, Feyenoord has a talented young core.

Arnautovic: on his way to Inter?

FC Twente still has Marko Arnautovic, although he may be off to Inter Milan before this preview runs. It is still unclear how Twente will cope with the loss of their two young wingers. Dougles still patrols the back, but probably not for another season after this one. Tiote is a young, strong defensive midfielder who has French League stardom written all over him.

I could go on and on like this, as a matter of fact. Truth is the Eredivisie’s weakness is also its strength. Because they cant hold on to their players, Dutch teams are forced to have good academies and scout very well. Talented players like Berg, Dembele and Toivonen still see Holland as the ideal step up to the big leagues and when you see their success rate, its hard to argue with them. This results in young talented teams throwing everything they have at each other. What more reason do you need to watch?