This is probably not going where you think.

The Dutch were a gormless piece of driftwood during the qualification period for Euro 2016. They were expected to walk over Group A, and a now notorious fail last week punctuated by a laughable own goal from Robin van Persie destroyed those hopes. Five years after finishing second in a World Cup and a year after finishing third, the Netherlands suddenly found itself inside the cage instead of in its customary role as the locksmith. It finished fourth in Group A behind the Czech Republic, Iceland and Turkey, lost five of its 10 qualifying matches and played some truly dire soccer. Truly.

That more or less cemented a troublesome (and worrisome) year for Dutch soccer. The Eredivisie will continue to produce top talent, but it is being raided at an unprecedented rate by an ever shrinking number of engorged megaclubs. PSV was a wonder to watch a year ago, and it was dismantled by England almost as quickly as it was built. The league is waging a losing war to keep its best players (and even its best prospects) in place for more than a few years.

Dutch players are being uprooted at record pace, and the halls of power don’t include the Netherlands, even if those walls are held in place at least in part by Dutch brick.

For some time now, former Ajax legend Johan Cruyff has taken that prized cerebral mesh grid with which he views soccer and draped it over a regular column he pens for Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. Cruyff ambles over topics like a benevolent wizard touching his staff to the issues of the day: development, playing style, the results of the week previous. Cruyff has taken his place as a sort of Svengali-in-residence, a valuable third party tool analyzing, critiquing, praising.

Cruyff’s take on the Dutch failure in Euro qualifying was astute, to the point and measured. In essence, he blamed the KNVB, the Dutch federation, not the coaches or the players. Here are a few choice excerpts.

“The problems we have are not from yesterday and the KNVB should have acted earlier. It’s not the result but the style of play that needs to be analysed. Almost everybody has the same problem. When you play against a strong team we have elements to surprise, but when teams have to take the initiative themselves that’s where problems arise.” “We must train more to the high standards and on things of worth in football. The through ball is not good enough, general passes to fellow teammates are also often not good enough. The 3rd man is never reached and our counter attacking is far too slow. All these elements and parts of the game can be improved in training and the KNVB should ensure this.” “I can only hope that the eyes of the KNVB are now opened. Because not qualifying is a catastrophe, but on the other hand maybe it will wake everyone up. Because it is high time that happened.” “I have focused on technical aspects in my columns in the last months and I have said that most of these aspects can be trained, even for average players. It is not relevant if Arjen Robben is playing or not. A great player, who has something extra, but if he is not available it doesn’t mean you don’t have to play football anymore.” “An example of this is how to support your forward winger. Anwar El Ghazi’s strengh is his creativity and trying to outplay his opponent. As a back or a striker, you need to give El Ghazi space to play and not close in on him. And this anticipating to specific qualities is what is missing in Dutch football. It is a problem that can be solved just by applying the basic rules and that is what the KNVB should look into.”

Ah. As if those don’t hit dangerously close to home.

These problems are not doppelgangers to those we face in the States, but they are not anathema either. The playing style tilts one way and the next based on the whims of the coach, there is no continuity, the team can neither counter nor build possession consistently, it struggles in big competitions. And men from inside the Dutch system – men like Cruyff – are willing and able to call those things to light.

Every federation is shaken and then stirred to change by a final breaking point. Read Raphael Honigstein’s excelled Das Reboot to see how the 2000 Euros were that moment for the Germans. Despite recent success, perhaps this is that bolt for the Dutch. When they turned from following Nigel De Jong’s jackbooted lead to something a bit more… well… Dutch.

The soccer media itself will always be met with the shaded, concealed light of skepticism inside the halls of change here. Whether that’s fair or not – sometimes it is, most times it is not – Klinsmann can always politely dust those critiques off his shoulder. What does he care if one of the few national soccer columnists is critical here? I believe he’s so ready to welcome criticism now, as opposed to his time in Germany, because he knows how little those words will actually affect change. There’s too much money in him, too many ties, too many words poured into change. It’s soccer in America, after all. There are college coaches who’ve compiled astounding losing records and kept their jobs for 20+ years. National interest dictates the will of the polity. Too much of it – an unhealthy amount of it – creates never-ending change. Too little and the change never really begins in the first place.

The media reach isn’t wide enough and the national lens isn’t fully focused on his job enough for Klinsmann to feel that. There are no wider segments on SportsCenter with multiple analysts decrying or defending Klinsmann, or calling out the wide play, or questioning Jermaine Jones’ motor, or the team’s age. These things don’t happen here. Take your NFL highlights and move along.

In the absence of that wider media presence, U.S. Soccer needs more former players using their leveraged expertise to affect the change that, in reality, has to start with them. Cruyff can help push change more than the far more experienced and technically gifted wordsmiths who write for that very paper precisely because of who he is, who the Dutch populace knows him to be, what he stands for. And these aren’t cheap shots, or the engagement of a personal vendetta. They are substantive critiques lashed to the back of failure.

Agents of change are far more effective when they can pull the rotted bricks out of the superstructure from the inside. That, after all, is where the decay is most evident. And that’s what we’re asking, here.

I put together this graph charting the stylistic differences of the five USMNT coaches since the 1994 World Cup. You are of course free to disagree, but I stand behind my analysis.

Some day, perhaps, the U.S. will welcome a coach determined to nose his way into the eastern half of the graph. But that day doesn’t appear to be particularly soon in coming.

Klinsmann is by far the most prosaic coach in USMNT history, and he only barely nudges into the shaded edge of idealistic play via some moments – brief as they are – of aspirant play. But strip out what he says about playing attacking, fluid soccer and watch the way his teams actually play more often than not and you’ll get a better idea. That Nigeria game produced beauty, and it was a historical aberration. Klinsmann, who is more idealistic than his predecessors, gave Danny Williams the No. 10 shirt in the USMNT’s dire 1-0 loss to Costa Rica last week. I know of no better symbol produced by the post-World Cup Klinsmann era.

In any case, this comment from Cruyff still rings like a rogue tuning fork in my ears: “A great player has something extra, but if he is not available it doesn’t mean you don’t have to play football anymore.”

Ah, Johan. You’re free to write here any time.