Dutch do well for top clubs

Monday 23 February 2009

It was a pretty good weekend for the many Dutch players and coaches at their European top sides.

In England all eyes were on Guus Hiddink who has put his reputation on the line by accepting the job at Chelsea, but so far that reputation has only gotten bigger over the past two weeks.

He made a good impression during his first press conference, he seems to have struck the right chord with the players and on Saturday his Chelsea side beat Aston Villa in Birmingham, a feat that the club had last accomplished 10 years ago.

Guus Geluk (Lucky Guus) as he is called in Holland, didn't make any dramatic chances to the team, and basically reached back to the days of Jose Mourinho when Chelsea would often get an early goal and then control the game until the 90 minutes were over.

The championship seems far away, but an FA Cup or even a Champion League are within Guus' reach.

The championship in Germany is coming mighty close for Martin Jol and his Hamburger SV.

On Sunday HSV beat number 5 in the Bundesliga Bayer Leverkusen in Leverkusen (1-2) and with Berlin losing 2-1 to Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim drawing 3-3 at Stuttgart Jol's team are now the sole leaders in the Bundesliga.

With 13 games left to play Hamburg hold a two point lead over Berlin and Hoffenheim and four points over Bayern Munich who lost 1-2 at home to Cologne.

Another Dutch coach well on the way to a league title is Co Adriaanse and his club Red Bull Salzburg, who won the top game in the Austrian first division against Rapid Wien on Sunday 2-1.

With 14 games left to play Salzburg now have a 7 point lead over Rapid and a game in hand.

Adriaanse also reacted to rumors that he will be the next coach of PSV Eindhoven.

Neither confirming nor denying the rumors he said that "PSV are a nice club".

After scoring his first goal last week Klaas-Jan Huntelaar seems to have settled in at Real Madrid as the former Ajax player netted two more in a 6-1 win over Betis Seville.

The Spanish champions tightened the gap to Barcelona - now 7 points - as the team of Pep Guardiola lost 1-0 at Numancia.

In Italy Clarence Seedorf was worth his weight in gold for AC Milan.

The Rossoneri beat Cagliari 1-0 and Seedorf scored the only goal on the hour.

Milan are now third in the Serie A , 11 points behind leaders Inter and 13 games left to play.

Dirk Kuyt also scored an important goal for Liverpool when he achieved a late equalizer at home to Manchester City: 1-1.