Roda JC survives!

At UF, we love a good, heartwarming story, and Roda JC's is no different. As you know, Norwich weren't as lucky in their relegation battle -- sorry Bigus, next year! -- but our Limberger friends in the Eredivisie were, and Joep Smeets had this to say about their final weekend.

Nick Hornby once wrote that it is only acceptable to sell your soul to two clubs when they are so different they are unlikely to ever meet. Hornby spoke about Arsenal and Cambridge United; my father raised me to love Roda JC and Barcelona. This past week, those two clubs and my emotional state couldn’t have been at two further extremes.

After the explosion of joy that was the win against Chelsea, Barcelona started preparing for the league title. Roda started to prepare for a last, desperate reach to get out of the seemingly bottomless relegation hole they had dug themselves into. One game to go, in need of a win but away at Feyenoord, relegation would be a fitting end to a disastrous year.

After signing a multi-year extension at the end of last season, Roda’s coach had to go early into this one. He did not go quietly. The mudslinging between club and coach, the outspoken reluctance with which his assistant took over and a long and fruitless search for a suitable (and, sadly more importantly, affordable) replacement were diversions an already under-performing team really didn’t need.

And then came the merger.

Roda is from Kerkrade, located in the southernmost point of Holland. In this small area are two other professional teams; Fortuna Sittard and MVV, both second-leaguers, both perennially in financial trouble. The south of Limburg is an economically troubled region, so there are too few sponsors to sustain all these three clubs. Roda, too, has always been dependent on transfer income and personal investments of Nol Hendriks, a local industrialist.

When Governor Frissen took a long hard look at this situation - all three clubs performing poorly in their leagues, and even more so financially - he concluded it would be a smashing idea to concoct a merger. And while the clubs are no more than thirty kilometers apart at most, there are enormous cultural differences in that tiny region and as a result, the rivalry between them borders on civil war.

The Dutch Football Association, who had repeatedly shot themselves in the foot in recent years by adding new clubs to a league in desperate need of the exact opposite, saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Their decision over the fate of Fortuna Sittard (which would have suspended their license) was postponed on the sole condition they would merge with Roda; MVV, in a bewildering momentary state of financial security, had opted out.

Roda, meanwhile, was steadily heading for the relegation zone.

It would take a book to write down everything that happened in those months. A commission, existing solely of people who had already spoken out in favor of the merger, was formed. They came to the surprising result that the merger was indeed a good idea, in spite of heavy fan protest and accusations they had not done enough to see if the teams could still manage to go on separately.

When they decided to go through with it, it turned out that the raise in budget the commission had promised would have had to come from the city government; except nobody had told them. They were quite surprised to hear they had to cough up about four million euros, which may explain their reluctance to do just that. Without a raise in budget, the prime argument for a merger, it was blown off (as it had been before in 2000).

Through all this, Roda kept steadily digging away at the ground beneath their feet. They conceded a last minute offside goal in Week 33 that sent them into 18th place, the only spot in Holland that guarantees automatic relegation. Considering Roda’s already poor financial health, relegation virtually equaled bankruptcy.

So, without a single away win all season long, Roda traveled to Rotterdam. I was at work at Ajax – FC Twente when the game started and I don’t remember anything of that game. There are about 100 small screens inside a television truck and I had all of them that showed Roda within my eyesight shut down. I couldn’t watch. I was kept up to date by about five different people and with each text message I soared or fell. One goal up, then two goals and one man up. A team that hadn’t shown any character all season long was grabbing on to their last chance.

Feyenoord came back, 1-2. Roda countered, 1-3. Then 2-3 and another red card for Feyenoord. This was the point where our director, knowing I couldn’t see the game, thought it would be funny to say Feyenoord had tied. I’ve never felt worse in my life than how I felt knowing my team, the team I’ve loved for all my life, the team my father took me to when I was a kid, would effectively cease to exist. When he saw the expression on my face, he was so shocked he apologized immediately and profusely for his cruel joke. I didn’t care.

From the corner of my eye, on a small screen on the other side of the truck, I saw the referee blow the whistle. My team was saved. For now.

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More on the Van Basten fallout

Our friend Joep Smeets was available for comment to give us some insight into the mess at Ajax... COME ON YOU LIMBERGERS THIS WEEKEND!
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EULOGY OF A COACHING CAREER

Quite a few of my friends support Ajax, but none of them share an opinion about van Basten’s decision to leave his post one game before season’s end. One friend is disappointed, another one relieved. One is angry and another one resolved.

The decision follows a 2-6 loss at PSV in week 32, which killed off any title aspirations they may still have had and a 4-0 loss at Sparta, which lost them second place and the Champions League qualification.

Whether they’re angry or disappointed, when asked to look at Ajax’s season objectively, all of my friends agree results like these sound like reason for dismissal. But like I wrote in my Season Review, Ajax could not afford to fire van Basten for several reasons.

After years of hastily changing coaches, Ajax resolved to appoint someone for the long term. They went with van Basten, a child of the club and furthermore fresh off a pretty spectacular display at the Euros. They gave him a virtual carte blanche regarding staff and transfer policy, which is an usual position of power in Dutch football.

But van Basten inherited a squad that was meagre to say the least. His additions didn’t perform up to expectations either. Mickey Sulejmani, brought in for a record 16.5 Million Euro, obviously misses the outstanding support of Liverpool target Daniel Pranjic at Heerenveen.

Robbie Wielaert, who was brought in from FC Twente in the winter break to add leadership to a young defence has looked lost while his old team didn’t suffer in the slightest under his absence. Oleguer has looked disinterested and only turns up for European fixtures. Ismael Aissati was marred by injury. Don’t even get me started on Evander Sno.

Heavily depending on the maddeningly inconsistent Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez, Ajax lacked an idea of what it actually was they were doing all season long. There was no consensus starting eleven and the contrast between the hungry attitude of the team in European competition with their lethargic play domestically was enormous.

Furthermore, van Basten showed the same subtlety in dealing with individual players as he had done during his time at the Dutch national team, which is to say not very much at all. When goalie Maarten Stekelenburg went down injured and inexperienced replacement Kenneth Vermeer did well, Stekelenburg was unceremoniously benched upon return, only to see Vermeer crumble under the pressure of being first choice.

Leonardo, a striker who performed well each time when called upon from the bench wasn’t awarded with a first team place long enough for it to become a national discussion.

A legendary striker in his day, he was never the tactician who set out the lines for his team, nor was he a team player, let alone a team leader, but rather an eisenlgänger who was as gifted as he was disruptive. Van Basten’s reputation as a world class player is justified and many believe he was shocked by the lack of quality of his own players.

Never a great communicator, he failed to instil his own winning mentality in his team. Through all this, doubt about whether van Basten was the right man for the job remained, apparently also with San Marco himself.

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Eredivisie Review by Joep Smeets

With the Eredivisie winding down an incredible season, we thought we'd poll commenter Joep Smeets for some thoughts and opinion from the Netherlands.

When LB asked me if I wanted to review the finish to the Dutch Eredivisie, my stomach turned. Sure, this year’s league was an historic one, with a culmination of several interesting trends in Dutch football which I am happy to be able to detail in this post.

My stomach turned, however, because the season is not yet finished and I’m writing this knowing that my team, Roda JC is looking the prospect of relegation square in the eyes.

The reason I was asked to write this was because last Sunday, the fight for second place (and a CL qualification spot) was settled, with the championship being decided a week before. The Dutch league has been dominated by three teams for the past 30 years and none of those - Ajax, PSV or Feyenoord - laid claim to those two spots.

Instead it was AZ Alkmaar who won the title and FC Twente who took second place.


AZ came tantalizingly close to the league two seasons ago, only to blow their chances on the last day in one of the most bizarre days in Dutch football history.

Last season, they failed to live up to expectations with style, finishing in 12th place. When confronted with rumors about his dismissal, coach Louis van Gaal went on a tirade about how his players had to prove they were worthy of him instead of the other way around. After losing the first two games of this season they finally did, going on an unbeaten streak that lasted until two weeks ago, when they could clinch the title. For the second time in two years, AZ lost a game that could win them the league, only to have it handed to them by a 6-2 loss of Ajax at PSV the day after.

AZ’s success is mostly attributed to coach van Gaal and chairman Dirk Scheringa, who has led the club for 16 years. In the previous years, AZ’s budget has grown enormously thanks to Scheringa, allowing them to pay the players, who stood out in the rest of the league, hefty salaries. This, and the possibility of working with coaches such as Adriaanse and van Gaal attracted players who normally would have chosen for one of the top 3 teams, such as Stijn Schaars, Dutch international and Mounir El Hamdaoui, the league’s top scorer.

In recent years, AZ was known for its attacking flair, but this season saw them use a new, more reserved approach, dropping back and preserving leads rather than keep attacking and be vulnerable on the counter, which resulted in enough boring 2-0’s to wrap up the league.


FC Twente
FC Twente is the best example of a successful trend among provincial clubs in Holland who work, step by step, to raise their budget through outstanding scouting and a great youth set-up, much like SC Heerenveen and FC Groningen. All of these three teams have increased their stadium capacity in the past few years and have enormous local support from both fans and sponsors. They combine great scouting with the possibility to sign standout players from lower teams in the league and have been the biggest threat to the traditional top 3.

Ironically, many of the players these teams develop are then snatched up by the top 3 for inflated prices, but tend not to perform as well in a higher pressure situation (see, Sulejmani, Mickey). FC Twente qualified for the CL qualifications last year, only to be eliminated by Arsenal. This year, they duked it out with Ajax for second place until last weekend. Ajax, however, embarrassed themselves losing 4-0 to Sparta while Twente beat a very lethargic AZ, that had nothing to play for, at home 3-0, rendering their head to head in the last round meaningless.

Aside from their great league performance, Twente, led by Steve McClaren, did well in the UEFA cup and has made it to the Dutch cup final. They’re a team loaded with young talent, so look out for names like Elija and Arnautovic, both wingers, come silly season.

The "Top 3 (but really the Top 2)"
Clubs like AZ and Twente are ultimately just taking advantage of years of mismanagement by those traditionally considered to be the top teams in Holland, Ajax and PSV. I won’t even go into the downward spiral Feyenoord has been caught in for years.

Pundits think of Ajax as a team of skilled individuals who can’t function as a team. Their inexperienced coach van Basten – deemed by some Ajax Fans to have all the tactical knowledge of a pancake - isn’t capable of turning this around. Truth is Ajax has talented players, but not even a first team full of them. Van Basten’s inexperience became evident mostly in his inability to settle on an actual starting eleven, but Ajax can’t afford to send him packing after years of changes in management.

They’ve decided to commit to a coach for the long term, but van Basten has done nothing to show he’s Amsterdam’s version of Alex Ferguson. I could list a lot of this season’s disappointments for a club that was outstanding in the UEFA Cup until an overtime scrimmage knocked them out against Marseille, but the true tell of why this team didn’t challenge showed against PSV.

When AZ failed to clinch, Ajax, still had a long shot to make it a race. If they would beat PSV, and with only tough matches remaining for AZ - starting with a game in Amsterdam - the very least they could do was make a lot of people in Alkmaar very nervous. But against PSV, when they absolutely had to perform, they rolled over and got trampled. A week later, when all they had to do was beat Sparta to set up the home game head to head with Twente that would decide second place, they rolled over some more.

The story of PSV is far easier to explain. Champions for four successive seasons, the quality of their team deteriorated year after year. Every season, their top players left and each year the players that came in return were slightly worse. They went from dominant to good, to adequate and lucky until even that wasn’t enough for them to keep up with AZ anymore.


Finally, I want to use this spot as an opportunity to ask you to spare a thought for the fate of my club, Roda JC, as Sunday might very well be their last game in the Eredivisie. After a season full of controversy regarding a possible merger with our main rivals, my team is now facing relegation.

UFers, send the good vibes to Roda this weekend as they battle Feyenoord to secure their future in next season's Eredivisie. COME ON YOU LIMBERGERS, THE PRIDE OF THE SOUTH!

We'll hopefully be checking back in with Joep next week.

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