Haaland is a different kind of player. He doesn’t create much himself, he just scores most chances he is given. Put him in a shit team and he is shit too.

Bale is much more a creator. Give him the ball and something will happen.

Real Madrid pulled back their bid for Vd Beek, he really only played a handful of good games and was already in poor form when he left Ajax. He was incredibly hyped in England but many in the Netherlands questioned his talent. Vd Beek generally worked hard but the likes of De Jong, De Ligt, Onana and Ziyech were the much bigger talents.

Ajax always gets particularly good press in England, maybe because the upset in the semi’s helped there.

Noppert played a handful of good games prior to the WC. To everybody’s shock he actually played at the WC for the Dutch squad. He did alright, nothing special.

Since then he is still at his old club Heerenveen and seemingly getting worse by the week. No richer clubs show any sign of wanting to sign him, in fact he might lose his spot at Heerenveen.

I am seriously doubting how talented players like Brobbey and Taylor actually are. Only Hato is decent, but he is on a short contract and another season like last year, and being a known Feyenoord fan, might mean he is gone.

I’d rather look at what people with actual tactical knowledge have to say like Suley or Pieter Zwart instead of the populistic nonsense that comes out of Van der Vaart and Sneijder. They’re not free thinkers, they don’t really think at all.

That’s called cherry picking, and is not a good habit to pick up.

Ramaj hasn’t played because Steijn was angry at not getting Olij.

That’s what people say about Steijn, but I think he genuinely saw that his team lacked cohesension and communication and tried to help create that by fielding a Dutch goaly that has been at the club for a while.

Ramaj never played for a club like Ajax, nor under this amount of pressure, and doesn’t speak the language. That is fine for 1 player, but Ajax already had to field to many new players that were still settling in and had no clue about what it means to play for Ajax.

Also, Steijn was quickly getting a lot of criticism for subsituting to much and not giving his players confidence, had he also changed his keeper those voices would have been even stronger. Gorter played in the pre-season and did alright, naturally he didnt want to swap another player.

Steijn would have played Rulli or Pasveer if they werent injured and we would never be talking about who is second or third in line in the goal. Mislintat should have never spend 10M EUR on a secondary keeper nobody knew to begin with, and it would have been super easy for Mislintat to give Steijn a sense his opinion mattered by giving him what he wanted for an unimportant role as backup keeper.

The whole keper debate is one of the many examples of that Steijn was dealt a really bad hand.

I’ve been wondering what’s the link there. I can imagine you’d back your former colleagues. But why are guys like Sneijder and Van der Vaart so determined to back Steijn?

They are not, they are just free thinkers withs lots of experience that dont buy the emotional oversimplifications that the fans want. They all recognise Steijn had to go because he wasnt performing and that Steijn was dealt an impossible hand due to all the chaos, high expectations and lack of quality surrounding him.