Kuyt Works In The Background

Sometimes, in a team full of classical players, a man with slightly lesser amount of talent goes unnoticed despite the fact that he is as much responsible for the team’s success as those ‘Classical’ players.

The story of Dirk Kuyt is pretty much the same. He is not a typical Holland footballer. He is far from being artistic. He perhaps is not talented enough to be called world class either. But, over the years, he has contributed a lot in the success of Netherlands national team at big stages.

The ongoing World Cup in Brazil is the third World Cup of Kuyt’s career. He had been one of the stand-out Dutch players in the last World Cup in South Africa and was one of the key reasons why Netherlands had made it to the final.

The players like Kuyt are not flamboyant. They don’t score too often, but, the room that they make for the other players by running constantly on the pitch help their teams a lot. The fans might not notice that, but, the coaches sitting in the dugout know that perfectly well. That’s why, Kuyt despite crossing his thirty long back never fell out of favour for Netherlands.

Apart from being a workhorse, Kuyt is quite selfless too. He doesn’t play each and every match for Netherlands. Even in the ongoing World Cup, he was warming the bench in the matches against the reigning champions Spain and the Socceroos, but, he never complains about anything.

He is happy to play whenever his manager wants him to. He would have hardly made a statement ever in his international career about not being a certainty in the starting line up. Any manager in the world would be delighted to have a guy like him in the team.