The world might be hailing Louis van Gaal as a managerial genius for his inspired quarter-final substitution but it appears that not all the organisation in the Dutch camp has been quite so brilliant.
Read into that what you may, but certain actions taken by Holland’s KNVB suggest that they did not have faith that the new boss of Salford United and his squad had what it takes to do all the way.
The Dutch face Argentina in the semi-finals in Sao Paulo tonight, and will therefore play in either the third-fourth play-off game in Brasilia on Saturday or the final in the Maracana in Rio on Sunday.
However, Holland have already left their World Cup headquarters in Rio de Janeiro after only booking it until July 7 – which obviously was Monday.
It is a little difficult to know what to read into the Dutch camp’s planning, but it would seem to suggest that they were not expecting to be back for the final as their rooms at Rio’s Caesar Park hotel because have been sold to other people.
FIFA’s head of media Delia Fischer revealed: “The Dutch national team decided to book until July 7 and then decided to do venue hopping.
“Their hotel is now booking other clients, so it was fully up to the Dutch to decide when they wanted to leave and they decided July 7.
“It was not a question of throwing them out of the hotel.”
The truth might be that maybe Van Gall just wanted to keep things fresh for the final couple of games, but the tell-tale sign will be if the game against Argentina goes to penalties and Tim Krul is not thrust on to the pitch in the dying seconds of injury time.
Just as an aside Lionel Messi and Co may do well to consider chasing every ball late in the second period of extra-time should the contest go that far.
There was less than a minute left when the ball went out of play in the Netherlands clash with Costa Rica and had the Central Americans prevented it from going out there would have been no opportunity for the Dutch to bring on Newcastle United’s Krul as a substitute for Ajax’s Jasper Cillessen so that he was on the field and thus qualified to keep goal in the shootout.
But you have to generally be impressed with Van Gaal’s managerial nous in the tournament from working out how to rubbish the holders Spain in the opening Group B game all the way to getting the edge on the impressive Costa Ricans and go some way to ensuring that penalties did not turn out to be the lottery it often proves to be.
It is to be hoped that he will be a little bit more akin to David Moyes when he takes over his new job in the Premier League.
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