[ Football pitch with dimensions from Wikipedia by 'NielsF']
Tomorrow evening in Hamburg at 2045hrs the Dutch national football team – otherwise known as ‘Oranje’ or ‘Orange’ – will play a ‘friendly international’ against Germany.
Both teams played tied friendly games last Friday – Germany came from behind and ended in a 3-3 away draw against Ukraine while the Netherlands faced a determined Swiss team and played to a boring 0-0 result.
The less enlightened of the media of both nations are playing up the nationalist sentiments by saying there is a lot of prestige at stake and playing up the decades old rivalry between this ‘Oranje and Die Mannschaft’.
This does indeed to some degree still exist however most football fans have moved on from 1974 and 1988 and while some petty squabbling is inevitable both teams – and most fans -have a grudging respect for each other.
It is now generally admitted in the Netherlands that on that World Cup Final day in 1974, Germany deserved their win – they were on the day better than the Oranje team – who perhaps had been the better team over the entire tournament.
However that was not the case in Argentina 4 years later in the 1978 World Cup final when in fact Argentina was not the better team in the final and through various incidents of devious and unscrupulous behavior could be quite conclusively accused of having stolen that win.
However Denis Bergkamp, another one of those classical Dutch strikers like Marco van Basten, made up for that loss in part by a miraculous goal in Paris many years later when Holland beat Argentina in the quarter finals. It was high-lighted this week in the UK Guardian newspaper. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/nov/11/joy-of-six-first-touches-bergkamp?INTCMP=SRCH
Who says Dutch football commentators are un-emotional! – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqEWpHuib9A
Today’s very young German team play attractive passing football with lots of concomitant creativity up-front which results in lots of nice goals.
And when it comes to creative football the Dutch have an imagination like no other, even though they were a bit let-done in the final of the South Africa World Cup last year where they lost in overtime 0-1 with 10 men to Spain.
The ‘KNVB’ Dutch football federation coach Bert van Marwijk just like his German counterpart the Deutsche Fußball-Bundé ‘DFB’s Jogi Löw have been forced to experiment recently – partly from necessity and partly from curiosity to test different player combinations.
Being Dutch and living in Germany I have come to appreciate the Bundesliga and German players while recognizing that historically there have not been too many real ‘friendly’ matches between Germany and the Netherlands.
The rivalry between the two countries since the World Cup of 1974 and the Euro 1988 competition -if you do not include WWII – has been profound, however since more Dutch players and coaches are now in the Bundesliga itself a better understanding and more mature relationship has resulted.
Time heals all wounds they say and I feel that is the case in this respect and I look forward to the game tomorrow and want and expect an open ended game, with hopefully lots good scoring opportunities and fluid and open play.
Both teams can and usually do play an open and aggressive attacking type of football – and are both known for their offensive goal scoring abilities.
The teams are pretty evenly matched. Both mid-fields are good, with perhaps an edge for the Netherlands. Defensively with Neuer in goal perhaps Germany may have an edge there.
Both teams have young defenders who still tend to fall asleep and lose their concentration and can make the most outrageous and irritatingly stupid mistakes when the goalies are then left somehow to produce some instant magic in order to clean-up!
Absent for the Netherlands will be Robin van Persie, the injured Rafael van der Vaart, and the recuperating Arjen Robben and Ibrahim Afellay – so too bad that the Netherlands will not play up its strongest team.
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar of the German Bundesliga team ‘Schaller 04’ will be wearing a mask to protect his fully broken nose which he received playing in a Champions League game about 10 days ago.
The young German team are in very good physical condition and `always keep going for the full 90 minutes` the only Dutch player like this is Dirk Kuyt, in fact a sort of `Dutch German`.
Likewise Germany’s team will be missing some important players like Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm – Miroslav Klose and Marco Reus will be fit.
Mesut Özil – without a doubt a world-class player just starting his career - Khedira, Cacau, Mario Gomez, Tomas Mueller and the 19 year-old Mario Götze who plays for Borussia Dortmund, along with the Polish-born Podolski and Klose are all part of a very attractive German football side.
While no-one is expecting a ‘love-in’ – football is after all a very competitive and contact sport – the atmosphere should be one of mutual respect and played in the spirit of friendship.
Usually these games end in ties – so we will see tomorrow.
Tomorrow live 2015 on ZDF – don’t miss it!
This evening on Sport 1 on German TV see a documentary with a live debat after the show on the topic of ‘Deutschland gegen Holland’ – http://www.hoerzu.de/tv-programm/sendung/deutschland-gegen-holland-das-talkduell/sport1/14.11.2011/21.45
For some of the truely great goals of the Netherlands team in Euro 1988 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv4IgrV4HVM&NR=1
See also – http://netherlands.worldcupblog.org/
and read about the British win against Spain last week – http://e-u-r-o-2012.com/
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Germany vs Holland / Oranje vs ‘Die Mannschaft’ – Old football rivalry of 70′s/80′s re-lived tomorrow evening in Hamburg in International friendly match – by OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog sports contributor Filip van der Plas from OTA Berlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License. If you use this article or parts of it, please refer to http://www.ota-berlin.de.
Tags: 'Deutschland gegen Holland', arjen robben, Bastian Schweinsteiger, bert van marwijk, dennis bergkamp, Dirk Kuyt, Germany vs Holland, holland germany hamburg, Jogi Löw, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, knvb, Marco van Basten, Mesut Ozil, miroslav klose, Oranje and Die Mannschaft, oranje hamburg 2011, Oranje vs 'Die Mannschaft', Rafael van der Vaart, Robin van Persie
