Annihilated in Amsterdam

SCOTLAND arrived at the Amsterdam Arena last night in search of a result that would not be readily forgotten - and achieved their ambition as perversely as only they can.

Cut to pieces by a Dutch team in a savage mood after their defeat in the first match at Hampden last week, the Scots’ hopes of reaching the European Championship finals in Portugal next summer was replaced after only 13 minutes by an urgent need to avoid a record defeat.

That was how long it took Wesley Sneijder to cancel out the lead held by Berti Vogts’ team and to assure everyone in the great stadium that this would be a bloodbath. By the time the incomparable Ruud van Nistelrooy had completed his hat-trick and Andre Ooijer and substitute Frank de Boer had made their contributions, humiliation was all the Scots had to show.

Vogts sent out a team utterly bereft of a defensive capability in midfield, always likely to be an insurmountable handicap on a night when Dick Advocaat’s players would flood that crucial area with strength and skill - and ambition to match.

A disconcertingly long time before that goal from Sneijder, the majority of the Scots had the unmistakable look of men suddenly confronted with the realisation that they had strayed into a place where bad things were likely to happen. The uncertainty of movement, clumsiness and ill-timing in the challenge and general lack of conviction, especially in midfield and defence, hinted at an apprehension which the Dutch would sense and exploit as ruthlessly as their overall individual superiority had suggested they would the moment the play-off draw was made.
 

James McFadden and Darren Fletcher were, on occasions, the exception, the youngsters clearly striving to impose themselves as they had in the first match at Hampden, apparently free of the constricting anxieties of their team-mates. But, with the home side unsurprisingly stretching into a lead that took them over the horizon even before half-time, their endeavours were rarely likely to have an impact.

Fletcher did supply the free kick from the left which allowed Lee Wilkie a header which prompted an excellent save from Edwin van der Sar, but by then Advocaat’s side had already trebled their advantage. The surprise Vogts said he could give the Dutch turned out not to be the selection of Gavin Rae in place of the suspended Christian Dailly, but the Dundee midfielder’s deployment. Rather than occupying the space in front of his back four to prevent the runs of Rafael van der Vaart, Rae was, for much of the time, out on the right.

By no coincidence whatsoever, it was through that middle channel, the one patrolled so vigilantly by Dailly on Saturday, that Sneijder strode to score the opening goal. The Ajax midfielder picked up a loose ball and got away from Neil McCann with disturbing ease. After a couple of strides, he drove the ball right-footed from about 25 yards low to the right of goalkeeper Robert Douglas. Every tartan-bedecked supporter in the stadium would realise in that stricken moment that the game was up, that the prospect of a heroic comeback was as remote as it gets. If the Dutch for some time thereafter lost a little of their impetus, it proved to be simply the kind of breather a jockey gives a front-running horse before picking up the pace again.

The home side surged clear in five blistering minutes towards the interval, by which time Barry Ferguson, Steven Pressley and Paul Dickov had all been booked, to be followed soon after the third goal by Gary Naysmith. These offences all seemed to be rooted in the visitors’ frustration. Sneijder, having scored the first, proceeded to set up the next two, both from free kicks on the left. His first allowed Ooijer, an unlikely presence inside the opposing penalty box, an unchallenged header, which he sent over the line from six yards. Having rehearsed the move so perfectly, the Dutch reproduced it to the inch when Sneijder delivered the same free kick, only this time to Van Nistelrooy. The big Manchester United striker was smiling before his forehead made contact with the ball, knowing it would be directed unerringly to the right of Douglas.

The pre-match worry that Scotland would have severe difficulties in making an impact in forward areas proved for most of the time to have been well-founded, the midfielders kept so busy in their own half that they were rarely able to offer supplies to McFadden and the hard-working Dickov. The appearance of De Boer for Ooijer at the start of the second half was clearly a luxury for Advocaat, while the replacement of the injured Gary Naysmith by Maurice Ross and of Dickov by Stevie Crawford hinted at desperation by Vogts. The impression was confirmed when De Boer moved forward to meet a corner kick from Overmars on the left and glance the header past Douglas to give the Dutch their fifth. A long time before, Van Nistelrooy had delivered the fourth with the kind of economical finish - doing just enough to make sure the ball finds the net - at which he is a supreme exponent.

Davids and Overmars worked hard to release the striker into the box and, despite stumbling, he reached the ball before Douglas and sent the most delicate of lobs over his head. The big man racked up his treble by making an untracked run on to a low centre from Van der Meyde and knocking the ball right-footed to the left of Douglas from 12 yards. It was not the shock of the night that he should be given an ovation when he was replaced by Patrick Kluivert after 77 minutes. In a match in which they blew away all the criticisms of their performance in Glasgow and reduced the Scots to zombies, it was the least he and his team-mates deserved.

Holland: Van der Sar; Ooijer, Reizeger, Cocu, Bouma; Van der Meyde, Sneijder, Davids, Overmars; Van der Vaart; Van Nistelrooy. Subs: Makaay, Robben, Kluivert, De Boer, Waterreus, Van Hooijdonk, Seedorf.

Scotland: Douglas; McNamara, Pressley, Wilkie, Naysmith; Rae; Fletcher, Ferguson, McCann; McFadden, Dickov. Subs: Gould, G Alexander, Ross, Caldwell, Crawford, Miller, Hutchison.

Referee: L Michel (Slvk).

Holland press forward from the whistle and Scotland struggle to contain Holland's star players	Andre Ooijer puts Scotland firmly on the back foot by doubling Holland's lead just after the half-hour
Ruud van Nistelrooy compounds Scotland's misery, scoring a third five minutes later to give Holland a 3-0 half-time lead	It's a bad tempered start to the match as the players square up after Ruud van Nistelrooy pushes Barry Ferguson
Frank de Boer adds a fifth as Holland finally live up to their intimidating reputation by taking Scotland apart	Van Nistelrooy completes the 6-0 win with hat-trick after 66 minutes and Scotland suffer their worst defeat for 42 years

This will haunt us forever, says Rae

SCOTLAND’s players left the Amsterdam Arena last night resembling victims of a mugging. It was their pride and dignity which they had been robbed of by a rampant Dutch side, and those who still felt able to talk about it offered no excuses. Gavin Rae, the Dundee midfielder whose seventh appearance for his country is one he will never forget, best articulated the feelings amongst a shellshocked and bewildered group of players who made their weary way home to Glasgow.

"This will haunt us forever," said Rae, the pain of the 6-0 thrashing by Holland still visible in his eyes. "Everyone is absolutely gutted. We also feel a bit ashamed, because we have let everyone down, the fans here tonight who were brilliant and all the people watching back home. It is very painful. It could have been one of the best nights of my life, playing for Scotland against one of the best teams in the world in a stadium like this, but it went the wrong way. I have had a few beatings like that with Dundee, against Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow, but this was on a different level. Tonight, it affects the whole of Scotland."

Rae admitted the Scotland players harboured fears of being on the end of a record defeat. When Ruud van Nistelrooy completed his hat-trick to make it 6-0 for Holland, Scotland still had 23 minutes left to avoid the 7-0 crushing by Uruguay in the 1954 World Cup finals being equalled or eclipsed. "When it gets to that stage, you worry it’s going to get ridiculous," said Rae. "We just had to keep it tight and try not to lose any more goals. We didn’t have much pride left after that, but we had to hold onto what we had. We let them start the game too well and gave away soft goals. Once they get in front, it is always going to be hard to come back. They certainly showed tonight they are a world-class team. Saturday was a positive for us, but tonight it has shown us again that we have to raise our game."

The elimination from Euro 2004 also signals the end of Paul Lambert’s international career, the currently injured Celtic captain having indicated he would not play for his country again if they failed to qualify. It means Barry Ferguson now has the job on a permanent basis, but the Blackburn Rovers midfielder was finding it difficult last night to look ahead to the task with any convincing degree of optimism.

"It’s very sore," said Ferguson. "We had to keep Holland quiet for the first 20 minutes, but losing the first goal as early as we did killed us a bit. We win as a team and lose as a team, so we can’t blame any individuals for what happened. We have bounced back before, after losing 5-0 in France, but this one is going to be hard to take. We have to go back to square one now and get ready for a new campaign in the World Cup. Hopefully, a few guys from the under-21s will come through and we can make some progress. It’s going to hard to get over this, though, because I was desperate to get to Portugal next summer, so was the whole team. There were a lot of disappointed guys in that dressing room at full-time and no-one was saying too much."

In contrast to Saturday’s committed, aggressive performance, Scotland were guilty last night of some crass defending While goalkeeper Robert Douglas was not prepared to discuss a torrid evening when he failed to cover himself in glory, defender Lee Wilkie was big enough to accept the back division simply were not good enough.

"I can’t believe we were as slack as that against world-class opponents," said Wilkie. "We defended so well on Saturday at Hampden, but to lose three goals from set pieces like we did tonight was a nightmare. We needed the Dutch to have another off day, but they really turned it on and we just didn’t play to our best. They were on top form and we were making mistakes at the back. Our attitude was exactly the same as it was on Saturday and the mentality was the same. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen for you, but it’s not nice to get a doing like that. It was hard to go in 3-0 down at half-time and I had a chance to get a goal back with a header, which might have made a difference. We have to try and be positive and there are a lot of young players in the team, but we are just not a world-class team like Holland."

Paul Dickov could consider himself one of the lucky ones when he was replaced by Stevie Crawford at half-time. The Leicester City striker toiled away manfully in the first 45 minutes but knew how tough it would be when Wesley Sneijder opened the scoring after 14 minutes.

"It was a great strike and there was not a lot you could about it," said Dickov. "It got their tails up. They are a world-class side, but you can say all the goals could have been avoided. We won on Saturday as a team and we lost tonight as a team. You cannot blame any one individual. I have been involved in a few bad performances [with Scotland], but this is the most disappointing. I would like to apologise to the fans, because they were brilliant as always. We have to pick ourselves up now. There is a World Cup qualifying campaign just around the corner. I don’t think [the defeat] will affect us too much. The young boys will be fine. At the end of the day, it was an experience. And you need to have experiences, good and bad."

Gary Naysmith, like Dickov, left the brutal scene at the interval, having taken a blow to the head in a clash with Ruud van Nistelrooy. "We have to believe we were lucky it was only six," said the Everton player. "Everyone is disappointed because we genuinely thought we had a chance. To lose two goals from set pieces was disappointing, and we always knew if we lost an early goals things would be bad."

Scots make no progress under Vogts - GLENN GIBBONS Chief Football Writer

AN emotion-free examination of the progress Scotland have made in 21 months under Berti Vogts - one uncluttered by inappropriate hysteria - would conclude that the national team may be compared with a highly-promoted, but fundamentally talentless singer; they have changed the act and are a bit more practised, but they still offend the ears. This claim of a basic lack of improvement - and, even more disturbing, the likelihood of its continuance through the foreseeable future - will be resisted only by those who considered a 1-1 draw at home to the worst Germany side in history and unconvincing, narrow victories over the Faroes and Lithuania at Hampden to be glowing evidence that the Scots were on the march towards a glorious tomorrow.

Berti Vogts and Tommy Burns could not stop the rot as Scotland suffered a humiliating and embarrassing defeat in Amsterdam

Nor is this impeachment of Vogts and his team prompted by a predictably overstrung and impetuous reaction to the events at the Amsterdam Arena the other night. Even if the 6-0 caning by the Netherlands was as embarrassing and distressing as most people could imagine, it would not come as a complete shock to anyone who had paid attention to Scotland’s overall performances within and without the series in Group 5 of the Euro 2004 qualifying. A personal view is that the 1-0 defeat by Lithuania in Kaunas last April was even more depressing, since the standard of opposition that night and the level of performance by both sides could have been slipped comfortably underneath the belly of a snake. The only difference between that match and the return at Hampden last month was the reversal of the 1-0 scoreline.

Until the dramatic intervention of the young substitute, Darren Fletcher, 20 minutes from the end, that final qualifier was marked by the kind of uninspired incompetence that has been at the core of most of Scotland’s work throughout Vogts’ tenure. There were similar anxieties among the 40,000-odd who attended the home game with the Faroes in September. In the time between the visitors’ equaliser and the interval, it was obvious to everyone in the stadium that the match was getting away from the Scots, that their confidence was ebbing towards non-existence.

It was their good fortune that Paul Dickov should sneak a goal on the stroke of half-time that renewed their zest and helped turn an otherwise unimpressive display into a 3-1 victory. Recognition of the Faroes as a team of part-timers for whom professional football is a hobby should have been sufficient to preclude the grotesque celebrations that followed the result. Few seemed to pay any heed, either, to the fact that, four days later, Lithuania beat the Faroes 3-0 in Torshavn.

In truth, Scotland in 21 matches under Vogts have delivered only two performances of genuine merit, the 2-0 victory over Iceland in October last year and last Saturday’s 1-0 win over the Dutch. The latter was given messianic status by a majority of those who saw it, but a rational appraisal could not have avoided recognising the good work with certain reservations. That the Dutch generally controlled the match was indisputable; that they did not enjoy the best of luck - most emphatically when they were refused a penalty kick for Jackie McNamara’s blatant trip on Marc Overmars - was inescapable. Dick Advocaat’s team did not deserve the crude criticisms of the Dutch media, because all they did wrong was fail to convert their abundant chances.

Had the Scotland squad travelled to Amsterdam on Monday to try to overcome a 3-1 deficit, rather than to defend a 1-0 advantage, there would have been no quibbling with the justness of their predicament. Vogts’ players deserved credit for their tenacity and for some of the football produced by their two best players, Fletcher and James McFadden, but, like the victory in Reykjavik, it was an isolated occurrence. The work of bookmakers’ odds compilers is driven by what they see and not by what they feel; the fact that the Scots could be backed at 10-1 was a true indicator of their prospects of winning Wednesday’s match; that they were on offer at 2-1 against qualifying for the finals, despite already being in the lead, suggested that the Dutch would win with goals to spare.

In this observer’s mind, those prices lengthened immediately on receipt of a team sheet that showed that Vogts had drafted Gavin Rae to replace the suspended Christian Dailly in midfield. This was no reflection on the Dundee man’s ability, but a comment on the unmissable, and deeply worrying, total absence of a defensive capability in the Scotland midfield. In the event, Rae was deployed wide on the right for all but a few minutes of the match, with Barry Ferguson operating in the pocket in front of the back four which Dailly had policed so effectively four days earlier. Ferguson’s defensive attributes are reminiscent of those of Ally McCoist.

When charged with this faux pas after the event, Vogts defended himself by saying that he had played the same system with the same players against Germany in Dortmund and that "we had done very well in that match." This response, on two counts, served merely to intensify anxieties over the manager’s credentials. First, it body-swerved the incontrovertible truth that Scotland had lost in Dortmund. Secondly, it suggested the delusion that Germany were comparable to Holland, that if a plan held up against the former, it should do so against the latter. In this instance, Vogts was either trying to kid us or himself. Neither possibility is a commendation for a national team manager who is required to have a firm grasp of realities and form lines.

There is no contesting the argument that Vogts is in charge of a generally mediocre group of players and there never has been, although he has been fortunate with the emergence of two youngsters of identifiable talent in Fletcher and McFadden. Nor is anyone entitled to deny him the right to try to be positive and optimistic in public. If the manager manifests bleakness, it will transmit itself to the players and - most significantly for the SFA’s revenues - to the paying customers.

But there are occasions, such as Wednesday’s humiliation, when incoherent evasiveness simply suggest confusion and helplessness. Apologists for Vogts persistently argue that he deserves time before judgments are made, adding that there is nothing he can do about the kind of eccentric defending we witnessed in Amsterdam. But these provisos apply to every manager and the broad picture of Vogts’ work over an appreciable period and through enough matches allows serious doubts about his capabilities. The 5-0 defeat by France on his first outing and the 6-0 beating by Holland on his last are bookends that suggest the material in between is hardly worth reading.