The legendary coach Louis van Gaal is happy about the successful World Cup qualification of the Dutch – and confesses his fear of failure.
The Dutch missed the 2018 World Cup. In 2022 in Qatar, however, they will be there after a long tremor. The decisive 2-0 win against Norway on Tuesday evening had a painful history, especially for coach Louis van Gaal.
In the course of his long coaching career, Louis van Gaal has already produced some iconic images. For example, when he swung his calves on the Munich city hall balcony at a championship celebration of FC Bayern in 2009. Or when he held the Champions League trophy on the shoulders of his young Ajax players in 1995.
The photos from Tuesday evening from the De Kuip stadium in Rotterdam will also go down in Dutch football history. They show the now 70-year-old van Gaal in a wheelchair, how he initially directs Oranje’s national team from the stands to successfully qualify for the World Cup via mobile phone. And how he later sits in the dressing room after the decisive 2-0 win against Norway with his players cheering. “We also drank champagne,” said van Gaal. “The guys implemented the plan fantastically.”
Last weekend, the mood of the former Bayern, Barcelona, Ajax Amsterdam and Manchester United coaches was completely different. “I was afraid it would go very wrong,” confessed van Gaal on Dutch television. This is a remarkable statement for such a self-confident and mission-conscious person. Especially since after the Norwegian mistake against Latvia (0-0) on the Saturday before the game in Montenegro he had said grandly: “I’ll cheer and then the rest of them will join in.” But then the Dutch team also failed and missed the chance to qualify early for the 2022 World Cup because they conceded two late goals in the 2-2 win in Montenegro.
The past four days, however, reflected the state of the proud Dutch football well. The Euro 2016 and World Cup 2018 were missed. At the European Championships this summer, they failed in the round of 16 against the no-name team from the Czech Republic. And then van Gaal fell off his bike and broke a hip bone.
“We had to give an answer after Saturday and we did that,” said captain Virgil van Dijk (30), who missed the European Championship in the summer due to a cruciate ligament rupture that had not yet completely healed. “Now we’re going to the World Cup. I can’t wait to be there.”
If you have professionals like van Dijk (Liverpool FC) and goal scorer Steven Bergwijn (Tottenham Hotspur / 84th minute) and Memphis Depay (FC Barcelona / 90th + 1) in your squad, you probably belong to a World Cup. Nevertheless, this generation still arouses great skepticism and sometimes bitter criticism in a country that has already brought players like Johan Cruyff or Marco van Basten to the football world.
The Dutch press remains skeptical
“Oranje is not going to Qatar as a favorite, but as an outsider,” wrote the newspaper De Telegraaf. De Volkskrant’s colleagues saw against Norway without the injured attacker Erling Haaland “a game of monumentally boredom. As if playing football was suddenly something difficult that they had only done a few times and that is not their job”. In fact, safety football was played on both sides – and only when the Norwegians, who would have needed a win to overtake the Netherlands in the table, gave up their defensive strategy and played more offensively, the vice world champions of 1974, 1978 and 2010 came to the two (counterattack -) gates.
As the Dutch national coach, Van Gaal knows both extremes. 20 years ago he failed with gifted players like Marc Overmars and Patrick Kluivert completely surprisingly in qualifying for the 2002 World Cup. In 2014 in Brazil, he led a much weaker team around Arjen Robben to the World Cup semi-finals. Van Gaal’s ability to put together and shape a team will again be particularly important in Qatar. At the age of 71, he will probably be in the photographers’ flash for the last time as a coach at the 2022 World Cup.
The following are already qualified for the World Cup:
Germany, Denmark, Belgium, defending champions France, Croatia, Serbia, Spain, England, Switzerland, Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina. Qatar is automatically qualified to host. A total of 32 nations will take part in the 2022 World Cup, which begins on November 21 and ends with the final on December 18.
This is how the playoffs work: Whether European champions Italy or the Portuguese with star ticker Cristiano Ronaldo: twelve European teams have to fight in the playoff tournament for the remaining three tickets for the football World Cup in Qatar. The mode carries a great risk.
The playoff mode and the teams: The ten runners-up in the group as well as the two best group winners of the Nations League 2020/21 who did not secure the ticket directly via the European qualifying games and also did not make the jump into the playoffs qualified. These are the following teams: Portugal, Wales, Italy, Scotland, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Poland, North Macedonia, Ukraine, Austria and the Czech Republic.
The draw: It will take place on November 26th at 5 p.m. in Zurich. The twelve teams are divided into two pools, one of which is drawn for each semi-final. In the first pot are the six best runners-up in the qualification, they have home rights in the semi-finals. The other six teams are in pot 2. Portugal could only meet Italy in the final, but not in the semifinals. The only restriction: Ukraine and Russia cannot be drawn against each other for political reasons.
The lottery bowl: Pot 1 includes the six top runners-up in the group: Portugal, Scotland, Italy, Russia, Sweden and Wales. Pot 2 includes Turkey, Poland, North Macedonia, Ukraine, Austria and the Czech Republic, who have qualified through the Nations League.
The game mode: This time, qualifying for the World Cup is much more difficult than it used to be, when there were knockout matches with two legs and every team definitely had one home right. That way you could make up for a defeat. Now you are already out after the first defeat – because in the playoffs, four teams in three groups each play in the semifinals and finals for the ticket to the world championship. In the semifinals, only the six best runners-up in the group now have home rights in the first lottery pot. The semi-finals will take place on March 24th. The three finals will be played on March 29th. Home rights will be drawn for the respective finals.
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