Lowy's great legacy – going Dutch

This – the log in the computer tells me - is the 300th column I will write for this website.

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Time flies when you’re having fun. Or sit, day in and day out, hunched over a keyboard, in the end getting Repetitive Strain Injury (medical term) to the extent where your back muscles go into a spasm and you are forced to give half your salary to your physio so that you can continue to hunch and type, develop more RSI and give more to the physio.

In any case, such landmarks give cause for some natural reflection and, in this case, consider all that has happened since the hunching began.

In May 2000, when The World Game was launched, Frank Farina was our national coach, Basil Scarsella was chairman of Soccer Australia and the NSL was seen as a decaying competition, despite that month’s memorable grand final between Perth Glory and the Wollongong Wolves in front of a record 43,000.

Well, baby, look at the game now.

In one of the early columns, filed in July, 2000, I reviewed Euro 2000, lamenting the fact that three of the four semi finalists of that tournament – Italy, Portugal and France – were from the southern half of Europe, the half that is culturally bent towards treating football more like an art than as a sport.

The point of the column, however, was that the fourth semi finalist, Holland, despite being from the north, was not so dissimilar from the other three in its cultured style and technical approach, except for the fact that the Dutch played that way not by cultural blueprint but by pragmatic calculation.

The implication for Australia, argued the column, was that if the Dutch could acquire and import this kind of emphasis on skill and creativity, then surely so could we, as a country with a football heritage of wooden technique, rolled up sleeves and muscle - which was pretty much the Dutch way pre Rinus Michels, Johan Cruyff, Total Football and all of that.

Eight years on we have had two Dutch national coaches (plus a third, Dick Advocaat, who reneged, and chased another two, Leo Beenhakker and Louis van Gaal), and a Dutch technical director.

The Dutch technical ideology, and all strength to it, has permeated our game, right down to the boot straps of our six-year-olds who are now playing small sided games. The gold in the green and gold has taken on a decidedly orange hue.

The Olyroos, under a self-confessed Hiddink-disciple, are playing the Dutch way and Rob Baan, our Dutch TD, is mandated to ensure that the same ideological line is followed with the younger national teams.

We now even are to have an under-14 national boys team, a Baan initiative, and you can guess what technical culture they will be playing under.

Johnny Warren, who was still very much alive in 2000, would scarcely believe all this now, that all this could happen in such a short time span, but he would surely be pleased. He only ever said that we should learn from the best and that, at last, is what we are now trying to do.

At Euro 2000 the Dutch national coach, Frank Rijkaard, nobly resigned after Holland lost its luckless semi final to Italy in a penalty shootout. Two years later he took over at FC Barcelona and led them to be the most admired club team in the world, not just because of their results, which were impressive, but because of the way they achieved them.

Six years on he is still there. He won’t last it seems because the power of the dressing room, inhabited by millionaire players as petulant as they are rich, has weighed him down. But even on the eve of his departure, with all the dressing room turbulence, with no Ronaldinho, his Barca still managed to completely outplay Manchester United over two legs of the Champions League semi finals.

United, who are now in the final in Moscow on May 21, went to the Nou Camp and cowered like wimps in the first leg. Barca went to Old Trafford and did the opposite in the return, dominating the game, but still lost, though only barely after a Zambrotta mental block and a Scholes king hit.

The Dutch way, part of whose credo is to dictate play through ball possession and attack with conviction, is still the best way and it remains the best model for Australia.

The Dutch imprint on Australian football only began with Guus Hiddink in 2005. And Hiddink, let’s be honest, was not appointed because he was Dutch, or because of any broader desire to import Dutch football methods, but because he was both immensely successful and available.

Hiddink went on to completely transform the Australian team’s way of playing, led it to a successful World Cup, and the penny dropped.

We have been going orange ever since. And the conclusion that going Dutch may be a good thing, arrived at by pure accident thanks to the Hiddink appointment, may be the greatest legacy of the Lowy years.

Of course some of us knew that we could have done this a lot earlier, like 30 years ago, but I guess it’s better late then never.

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