Curiosity and open-mindedness have made way for nostalgia and conservatism. It's tempting to see the parallel with the rest of Dutch society.
https://www.theguardian.c(...)all?CMP=share_btn_tw"Marcel Brands of PSV, in a discussion in 2014 with his fellow technical directors of the so-called big three, Marc Overmars of Ajax and Feyenoord’s Martin van Geel, remarked: “We develop many intelligent, tactically strong players. We just need to improve substantially in the winning factor. I went to Portugal recently: Sporting, Benfica and Porto. There it is completely different. There it is all about winning. With us, it’s the exact opposite: ‘80% possession, played well, yes but we lose 1-0.’"
Actually, that this was his conclusion after looking at the Portuguese football scene explains what's wrong with Dutch football nowadays. Because if there's anything that characterizes the approach of those three clubs is not - at all - an emphasis on winning at all costs, but an emphasis on having an integrated philosophy of play from the youth ranks to the first team; even if we are forced to buy lots of foreign players to the keep the quality up and make money.
Both Benfica, Porto, and Sporting manage year after year - despite selling their best players and playing in Europe against teams with much larger financial resources (Valencia, per instance, has a higher budget than any of our top three) - to stay competitive because they emphasize tactical preparation rather than the typical 'winning at all costs whatever the type of play': teams here, particularly the best, always play zonal defense, defend and attack as a whole, try to build up from the back and always try to control the game through possession/or a supporting attacking game.
Players' decision-making within each manager's system of play is absolutely emphasised: intensity is understood here as being tactical, not physical. All in all, it explains why Portuguese managers do so well abroad, even the least successful cases. People talk about Italian and Spanish managers, but we are 10 million and have exported guys like Mourinho, Paulo Fonseca, Vilas Boas, Carlos Queiroz, Carlos Carvalhal, Paulo Sousa, Marco Silva, etc.
In comparison, once you watch Dutch teams, particularly PSV, you see them defending man-to-man, breaking up the team in two halves in the defensive and attacking phases, in short, playing like if they had not learnt anything from people like Cruyff & Van Gaal. Where the Spaniards, Portuguese and Germans looked up to the Netherlands, took up the best parts and improved on them, the Dutch reneged on their football heritage and went back to the dark ages.