Netherlands re-emerge as soccer’s great talent factory

Reports of Dutch soccer’s death were greatly exaggerated. Frenkie de Jong and Matthjis de Ligt lead a new generation of stars.

Not since the 1980s had the Netherlands failed to qualify for back-to-back major tournaments. As the rest of the footballing world, at least the elite, pitched up in Russia for a month-long World Cup party last summer, the Dutch were outside with their noses pressed against the window. It wasn’t something they were terribly accustomed to.

Four years previously, they’d been the ones to bring the party to the World Cup, quite literally, staying in a hotel right on Copacabana Beach that had late-night revelers taking the elevators with the players up to the rooftop pool bar. Netherlands enjoyed themselves on the pitch, too, coming within a penalty shootout of reaching the final having played some swashbuckling soccer under Louis van Gaal.

There was no swashbuckling in the years that followed, though. In fact, the period between 2014 and 2018 will be remembered as something of a nadir for the Dutch game. For generations, Netherlands had been the Henry Ford of youth production in soccer, but between World Cups the conveyer belt slowed to a stop. Some even questioned whether it marked the end of the Dutch soccer dynasty.

Those suggestions look rather foolish now. Indeed, the Dutch soccer dynasty is back up and running again, with the latest crop of talent as exciting as anything the country of just 17 million inhabitants has churned out since the last ’90s. Reports of Dutch soccer’s death were greatly exaggerated.

Since missing out on last summer’s World Cup, Netherlands have thumped Germany — a record-breaking 3-0 win over their rivals — and beaten recently-crowned world champions France, also drawing away to Belgium and Germany in the return Nations League fixture against Joachim Low’s side. Thursday also saw the Dutch start their Euro 2020 qualification campaign on the front foot, seeing off Belarus with a comprehensive 4-0 win.

Frenkie de Jong is widely viewed as European soccer’s next great midfielder, with the 21-year-old all set to make the €75 million move from Ajax to Barcelona this summer. He’s the centre-piece around which Ronald Koeman is building his Netherlands side, with another Ajax talent, Matthijs de Ligt, only adding to what is becoming the strongest spine in international soccer.

The correlation between the success of Ajax and that of Dutch soccer as a whole has always been strong. Johan Cruyff, after all, is credited with forging the identity of both the Amsterdam club and the Netherlands national team. Given this, there’s something traditionally satisfying about the resumption of this de facto reliance on one another.

Ajax have provided one of the storylines of the 2018-19 European soccer season so far, pulling off an astonishing 4-1 win at the Santiago Bernabeu to eliminate defending champions Real Madrid from this season’s Champions League. They did this with a team built around the central spine of de Jong, de Ligt and 21-year-old Donny van de Beek.

Those three players, particularly the former two, represent a large part of Dutch soccer’s future, but there are others like Nathan Ake and Denzel Dumfries who add to the feeling that Netherlands are building something special. This is on top of what they already have in a rejuvenated Memphis Depay, an in-form Georginio Wijnaldum and Virgil van Dijk, probably the best center-back in world soccer at this moment in time.

Just one year ago, Dutch soccer seemed solely concerned with ensuring its national team appeared at a major tournament again in the not-so-distant future. Now, ambitions have been raised further. By the time Euro 2020 rolls around, Netherlands will boast a side packed full of superstars, if that isn’t already the case. Their place as a member of the soccer elite, as zeitgeist-setters, looks secure for another generation.