Perhaps he should be renamed Midas van Basten. The Netherlands coach has undergone a remarkable transformation throughout Euro 2008.
Had the KNVB conducted a straw poll prior to the championships, Van Basten's popularity would have been somewhere south of Gordon Brown's standing among the British electorate. In the space of two weeks, he has won over more undecided voters than Barack Obama and been just as charmingly aggressive in his pursuit of a historic triumph.
At this rate of progress, he will shortly eclipse Johan Cruyff in terms of popularity and tangible achievement. It may be too much for the increasingly curmudgeonly ambassador for Total Football to bear. The pair publicly bickered over the tactical alteration that has enabled the Dutch to flourish.
Their relationship has since suffered caught another snag, this time over Cruyff's plans to relaunch the famous Ajax youth system for Van Basten's vaunted return to his former club. The coach, having listened intently to his mentor, had his own ideas. Communication is now distinctly one-way, and delivered through the medium of De Telegraaf, the Dutch newspaper for whom Cruyff is a contributor throughout Euro 2008.
The irony of Cruyff, steadfast in his principles in his era, taking umbrage at his protege for doing exactly that is startling. Van Basten will be a vindicated man even if his side unexpectedly slip up at the quarter-final stage. That, though, seems as unlikely as Cruyff retracting his caustic comments. Already, Van Basten has proven a master of flexibility. The 3-0 win against Italy in the opening match of Group C set a scintillating template. His 4-2-3-1 strategy provided the necessary protective layer in front of the weakest area of the team, central defence, but also enabled him to select four from an enviable pool of six awesome attackers.
At the first sign of trouble, when France flirted around Edwin van der Sar, Van Basten did not recoil but reinforce his front line with the staggered introduction of Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie. The results were spectacular, with the pair contributing to a 4-1 flattening of the short-lived French resistance.
Then came the conspiracy theory. The Netherlands, it went, would change an entire team for the final match of Group C, allow Romania to win and, thus, prevent the possibility of a revenge attack by either France or Italy in the semi-final. They got the first part right. Van Basten made nine changes, with only Orlando Engelaar and Khalid Boulahrouz surviving the cull, but still the swept past Victor Piturca's impotent team without breaking stride.
Unencumbered by injury or suspension, Van Basten's biggest dilemma for Saturday's quarter-final in Basle's St Jakob-Park is as it has always been: who to leave out. Robben and, to a lesser degree, Van Persie have enhanced their claims for a starting role. Wesley Sneijder is a guaranteed pick, whether in the Robben' role on the left or more central, Dirk Kuyt has performed flawlessly on the right, while Ruud van Nistelrooy has been an imperious figurehead of this surfeit of entertainment.
There is talk that Van Basten is plotting a new and even more audacious plan; namely to sacrifice one of his holding players, Engelaar or Nigel de Jong, to accommodate Sneijder in a more withdrawn role in midfield and make a straight choice between Rafael van der Vaart and Van Persie in support of Van Nistelrooy. "I think France and Italy probably thought they were superior to Holland," said Edwin van der Sar after the conspiracy theories were confounded.
"That was maybe their undoing and that's why we cannot possibly have that kind of approach for our quarter-final. If we play our possession football and our pressing game we have a chance . . ." He stopped short of confirming whether he meant for the quarter-final or the tournament itself. In truth, it was probably both.
It is another example of the Van Basten effect.
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