Cruel Irony, Orange is thy name. And, incidentally, thy Citrus Fruit of Choice. Fancy that.

It is one thing being Dutch. It is quite another being Dutch and having an attention span of less than five seconds when it comes to anything but football. And some other sports. Maybe... This would be a far less agonizing state of affairs in, say, Finland. The Finnish, I imagine, have by this point not given up every hope of a better future in football. Why would they? They have hardly achieved anything when not hurling themselves down a slope on skis, so the best, for them, could very well be still to come.

This does not, however, hold entirely true for the Dutch. At this point, I’m trying frantically to think of anyone/thing who/which experienced such an amazing tumble from grace and – and this is the important part - eventually got back up again. Icarus certainly didn’t, nor did the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Eighties or Nottingham Forrest. They are currently a dead Greek, either Austria or Hungary, the decade style forgot and a third or forth league (and rate) English side, respectively.

The irony, then, is that nobody seems really willing to give up on the Dutch like they have given up on glitter hair and dual monarchies just yet. And they claim not to for good reason. Because of the Dutch insistence on showing promise and failing to deliver upon that very same promise, our current irrelevancy is seen by some as, if anything, nothing more than a temporary lapse in greatness. It is seen not so much as a fall from a pedestal as it is seen as a slight wobble of that pedestal. Dutch football, some may think, has experienced one of those moments where you sleep but dream you fall. It’s a polite step down from grace, if anything.

But what if it isn’t? Everybody from Kiki Musampa to Rafael van der Vaart has been dubbed the new saviour of the national team, and none of them have up to this point. I wonder what it takes for an analyst to get up in the morning, shower, go to work and proclaim on television that whatever Dutch talent of the year is ‘the New Cruijff’. Aside from Brazil and Argentina, is there any other country in which one particular player is continually used as a measuring stick for any eighteen year old talent who cannot possibly live up to these expectations? France will suffer the same fate in the near future, when every young player will face the harsh and unfair comparison to Zidane. But Italy? Germany? England? Spain? All of them had greats in the past, but I’ve never heard anyone proclaiming Aaron Lennon to be the next George Best (Northern Irish, I know). Now some of you who may be better acquainted with the English game than I am will tell me that that is the case because in no way, Aaron Lennon is actually going to be the next George Best. I know this. But there’s no way either in which Hedwiges Maduro of Ajax is going to be the next Beckenbauer (we Dutch don’t feel the next Beckenbauer necessarily needs to be German), and yet that is a comparison often heard during the summer of 2005.

Fact is, there will, most likely, never be a new Cruijff. Lightning tends not to strike twice. So let’s keep our expectations low, be realistic and let us all hail the new Bergkamp. Because if it weren’t for Robin van Persie, I could very well see the Dutch National team go the way of Sissi, Pacman and that rather high-and-mighty looking Greek fellow.