Posts Tagged ‘Ruud van Nistelrooy’

Dutch Coach: My Main Madrid Players Need More Madrid Playing Time

Friday, February 6th, 2009

Netherlands National Football Team
Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk is starting to get ticked off that his two main players, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Rafael van der Vaart, are not getting enough playing time with their club, Real Madrid. He isn’t full on P.O. ‘ed yet, but he’s getting there.

van Marwijk should be concerned about Real’s health overall. While Huntelaar and van der Vaart are two of the better Real Madrid/Dutch players, Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder also play on both teams and provide valuable contributions. Real Madrid has turned into real breeding ground for Dutch football. Clarence Seerdoff did time at both squads as did Ruud van Nistelrooy until he quit the Dutch team last year. And newcomer Royston Drenthe currently plays the wing for los blancos with the hopes that he’ll someday play for his country.

I’ll just assume that Bert van Marwijk isn’t a Barcelona fan.

Courtesy Reuters.

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“Old Horsey Face” Nistelrooy is out for the season

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Ruud van Nistelrooy
Makes me wanna cry….for about 2 minutes.

On one hand, this bites. After David Beckham left Real Madrid in ‘07 for the LA Galaxy, it was Ruud van Nistelrooy that stepped up to take his place. Not in the midfield mind you, but as a strong supporting player that can score. With the team struggling this season, this is an ill-timed loss and on a more personal note, Ruudy’s my second favorite RM player after Iker Casillas. But on the other hand, history has proven that Real Madrid can win without him. And as proof of this, I’ll simply point to last season, when Ruud was injured for a looooooong time, yet the team went onto win the La Liga championship without him by more than enough points.

I’ll be honest though: Barcelona appears to have the league championship sealed this year when you look at the following parallel. Barca and Real Madrid have traditionally held the top two spots in La Liga and they usually end up competing for the league cup towards the end of the season. A big reason that Madrid took the cup last year was Ronaldinho’s implosion and somewhat early defection from the blaugranas…without him, Barcelona didn’t have a chance. The same may hold true for RM not having Ruddy in the strike position.

But the truth is, no one knows what’s going to happen in football. One thing that I’ve learned in this journey is that the footie game is much more unpredictable than other sports. Yeah, there were a lot of sports surprises this year. The New York Giants beat the seemingly impenetrable New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series while competing in one of the toughest MLB divisions. And after years of being second best at Wimbeldon, Rafael Nadal (one of Real Madrid’s most staunch supporters) snatched that trophy from Roger Federer’s hands. All these examples, however, are inconsistent ones-ones that happen during one big game (or seven in the case of the World Series) whereas an entire football season, it seems top me, is chocked full of surprises. This season is no exception.

My point is: while it may appear that Barcelona can now make room for another league trophy, Real Madrid may surprise all of us this season, regardless of this loss.

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GolTV air the “The Art Of Football” Documentary Today (10/1-8PM EDT)

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008


I saw the commercial for this documentary on GOLTV two or three weeks ago and I’m glad that I saw its press release this AM to remind me it was coming. Hosted by John Cleese, The Art Of Football is a 2-hour documentary (Part I airing tonight, Part II airing the same day and time on 10/8) that focuses on “the humorous and creative side of international soccer to demonstrate how the sport transcends borders, politics and race.” It’s also got quite an array of interview subjects: Bono, Arsene Wenger, Dennis Hopper, and Ruud van Nistelrooy; just to name a few. Looks like I’ll be doing some learning this evening.

I thought this doc was brand spanking new when the commercial aired, but I Google’d it and in turns out it was released in 2006 (got that piece of info from The Art Of Football’s IMDB page). And from what I see, it was a very limited release, at least stateside. Some more digging indicated that it was directed by Hermann Vaske out of Germany, so I then hit his site and found a ton of information on the doc as well as on Vaske himself. Here’s a more detailed page on the documentary, but also read this guy’s bio because it sounds like he’s got a lot of creative bones in his body. I plan to check out some his other works as well.


John Cleese and Herman Vaske

I ended my digging by checking to see if Netflix had TAOF available for rent and as they’re known for their deep doc selection, I was shocked to find that the didn’t. Now to be fair, my search yielded exactly 27,233 results and I didn’t scroll through all of them so they might have it, but I doubt it. That being said, if you’re based in the US and want to see this, tuning into GolTV tonight and next week may be your only chance to do so. GolTV or some other channel may re-air TAOF in the future, but it’s no guarantee.

I’m gonna try and review this tomorrow unless I don’t finish watching all the Champions League games I have stored on DVR.

Update: the version airing tonight and next week contains footage on the 2008 Euro Cup competition, so it’s definetly worth watching if you haven’t seem it.

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Ruud van Nistelrooy calls is quits from the Holland team

Monday, August 4th, 2008

Too bad…I thought that they had a GREAT showing in Euro ‘08 because of Ruudy.  He’s going to put is focus on Real Madrid, which I’m personally happy about.

Setanta reports here.

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