Holland/Belgium/Mexico/South Korea

SCHEDULE June 13th KOREA.REP - MEXICO (LYON, 17:30) HOLLAND - BELGIUM (SAINT-DENIS, 21:00) June 20th BELGIUM - MEXICO (BORDEAUX, 17:30) HOLLAND - KOREA.REP (MARSEILLE, 21:00) June 25th BELGIUM - KOREA.REP (PARIS, 16:00) HOLLAND - MEXICO (SAINT-ETIENNE, 16:00)

First place for Holland is sure, but this group will be a free-for-all where anything can happen The 3-4-3 promoted by current Barcelona Coach Louis van Hall when he was at Ajax was never completely digested under the leadership of Coach Hiddink. It turned out that properly teaching high-level technical understanding to a national team put together from members of many different club teams was too difficult and the Dutch suffered many unexpected indignities, such as the one-sided 4-1 loss to England at Euro 96. Ultimately, after that, Coach Hiddink changed the system to 4-4-2 and the team demonstrated a comparatively stable performance in matches. The most significant reason for this was that to the regular squad were added members of the PSV team, which had conquered the domestic league as opposed to the Ajax squad which had conquered the world and played outside the country and lost its conditioning. With these new members, the team played very plainly, but reliably. However, Holland and its neighboring country and rival Belgium suffered the largest damage from the "Bosman Decision". That is because their own top stars are exported, but they are unable to import world class athletes. Therefore, the level of the domestic league has suffered. Since Holland won consecutive victories over Belgium in the regional preliminaries, it is clear that Holland is overwhelmingly superior in this group. The core of the Belgium team is Van Der Elst who will be 37 and with the possibility that all the team members will be over 30, there is not much to say favorably about the Belgium team.

The fact that Bergkamp and Overmars are getting into good condition with Arsenal is good news, but the slump by Kluivert, who has suffered from continued personal problems, is a serious problem. While the core has deepened its confidence with Seedorf, who plays in Spain, Jonk has lost his previous brilliance and on the defensive side too, the departure of Brinto has left too large a hole. Mexico, which had seemed to be in the position of having to play catch up, has aggressively injected new members since the hiring of Coach Lapuente and is showing signs of improvement. The defense still needs better organization, but if Hernandez and Blanco perform as expected, Mexico has a real chance to come in second. Also, if Coach Cha Bum-Kun can realize his ideal of speedy soccer with strong finishing-off power, South Korea may be able to progress past the preliminary league.

TEAM POTENTIAL
	Offense	Defense	Overall	Probability of winning through
HOLLAND	B	C	B	75%
BELGIUM	C	C	C	50%
KOREA.REP	C	D	D	30%
MEXICO	B	D	C	45%