The Amsterdam ArenA is a marvellous cockpit for football, but for humiliation it reserves its own lack of mercy. On Wednesday night, before Berti Vogts' fearful and watery eyes, Scotland were clinically dismembered by Holland while the orange masses, in that manner that is often sinister, sang their folk songs. At one point even the bumptious Dick Advocaat seemed on the verge of crooning.
For Vogts, 24 hours later, it wasn't good enough yesterday to blithely talk of the excellence of the Dutch. Such scorelines as 6-0 are rarities in inter-national football these days but Scotland on Wednesday secured their own bleak entry in the annals of embarrassment.
What is more, the responsibility for the margin of defeat seemed as much Vogts' as that of his players.
No-one need waste their time or breath indulging in gratui-tous assassination of the Scotland manager. Everyone knows that, in international terms, Scotland possess plodding players. Vogts, beyond argument, had done well to take Scotland to the Euro 2004 play-offs, and, by good fortune or otherwise, he now has an impressive home win against Holland to boast of.
Few teams also have the wholesale finesse of the Dutch. One glaring difference between the two teams on Wednesday night was the way the defenders, Andre Ooijer and Wilfred Bouma, let alone the axed Frank de Boer, could instigate ball-playing moves from defence, in contrast to the Scots, with which practice they have yet to become wholly familiar. I do believe they used to call this Total Football.
Yet there remains an alarming naivety about Vogts. Amsterdam on Wednesday was reminiscent of Paris in the spring of 2002, where a young, porous Scotland, starring players such as Dougie Freedman and Gary Caldwell, entered the Stade de France playing a 4-3-3 only to be chewed apart by the French. You thought back then that, given this country's severe limitations, Vogts would make damage limitation a point of principle, but not so.
Amsterdam confirmed that Vogts' strategies are prone to earth tremors. Holland's fluid 3-2-3-2 system, and utter hogging of possession, meant that the Scots would have to adapt to the match as it unfolded. Yet Vogts did not seem tactically agile. On top of this, Steven Pressley and Lee Wilkie looked lost as Holland's attackers were spread out across the park, making you conclude there was genuine uncertainty in Vogts' mind about how to cope with his opponents.
At one point in the first half, Darren Fletcher, either at Vogts' behest or not - and I believe not - simply abandoned his berth wide on the right and planted himself in the centre of the midfield to try to get a personal purchase on the match. Fletcher was up against it in confronting such seasoned internationalists as Edgar Davids and Phillip Cocu, yet there was a definite impression of the Scots on the park being detached from and almost uninterested in their own dugout.
A manager's deliberations before the media ought to be a minor distraction, but it is impossible, nonetheless, to forget Vogts' senseless ramblings after Wednesday's capitulation. He said there was no shame in it, but that there was embarrassment. He claimed there was nothing shocking about Scotland's defeat, but that it had been terrible.
He said that it had been ''a very good lesson'' in terms of Scotland's preparation for their next World Cup campaign, whereas, in fact, it had been the opposite, a total disaster.
After five minutes of this, personally speaking, I needed ear-muffs to block out any further inanity or sheer drivel. Vogts looked mean and wary, a man whose suspicions were spread across his face. Too often, frankly, he does not resemble someone who has seen it with Germany.
Unless you are earnest about it all, it was actually impossible to avoid the slightly comic aspect of this drubbing. Given how poor we are in inter-national terms, the thought of Scotland, as they are today, scuffing and tugging their way through the early rounds of Euro 2004 next summer almost seems a mental exercise in graffiti. As Pat Nevin, among others, commented later, perhaps it is a blessing that UEFA have been spared us at their summer jamboree.
There is also something sketchy about big, bluff, ever-smiling Rab Douglas. The Scottish goalkeeper had just experienced shots and headers whizzing past him like exocets on the park, but there he was, at Amsterdam airport at midnight, leaning on a railing with a perky look on his face, as if he'd just been watching Laurel and Hardy. Big Rab had just joined that luckless pantheon of lampooned Scotland goalies.
All this was in stark contrast to the mood of Advocaat, the closest football manager I have ever come upon to a modern image of Mussolini. Advocaat himself had been nearing the stage of being strung up on piano-wire by the Dutch media, yet he overhauled his team, changed Holland's strategy, and came out with his own guns blazing on Wednesday night. He wasn't half crowing about it later, arms folded, asserting his chin.
In Scotland, it is now the fashion to detest the former Rangers manager. As a coach, Advocaat certainly blows hot and cold at work, but when he is hot, as both Rangers and Holland have discovered, he is molten.
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