Dutch coach Rijkaard calls it quits

“It had nothing to do with the match in itself,” he said.“It’s just that I had a goal in mind and I think that this generation of football players deserved it. I didn’t manage it. For me, it’s a great, great disappointment.

“But that’s part of the sport and from the bottom of my heart I want to thank all the players for their support, and for the wonderful time I had with them. “But we didn’t manage to get to the final and I have to draw my conclusions from that”, he said.

And he added: “My decision was taken before the match, because my aim was to win this championship … when I started two years ago.

“I find it terrible for the players, to have had to resign. But it’s a law in football that once something like this happens it’s time for another man to take over. My place is in football, but no longer with the National team.”

Asked if Holland’s defeat after a goalless draw was also a defeat for football — their attacking style having been beaten by traditional Italian defending, he replied: “That’s up to journalists to decide”.

Rijkaard indicated that the psychological blows of two missed spot-kicks proved decisive when the Dutch players had to face the shoot-out.

“I find it difficult to explain why we missed the penalties,” he said.

“But we had a pyschological disadvantage because we missed two penalties in the match and when Italy scored their first one in the shoot-out, we had another disadvantage because we missed our first one. So that’s one of the reasons for being out of the tournament.”

Rijkaard denied having been taken aback by the Italians’ fighting spirit, and put his team’s failure down to missed chances.

“I wasn’t surprised,” he said. “We studied the Italians very well and they played their game as we expected.

“I think that we really started well and we dominated the game. And that if we’d managed to break open the game, we could have played 11 men against 10 with a 1-0 lead.

“But after the second penalty miss, you could see some of the force — also psychologically — went out of the team. And the Italians became more determined to keep it 0-0 and they did a good job at that.”

Asked why he had picked skipper Frank de Boer to take the first shoot-out penalty after he had missed a spot-kick in the first-half, Rijkaard said: “Frank de Boer is normally reliable from the penalty spot.

“We all know that no one is eager to take a penalty in that sitution. But I picked one of the most reliable players to take our first one.

Rijkaard, who won two European Cups and two Italian league titles in a five-year spell at AC Milan during his playing career, took over as coach from Guus Hiddink after the 1998 World Cup in France — when the Dutch again went out on penalties at the semi-final stage, 4-2 to Brazil. He had been Hiddink’s assistant.

Although lacking in experience he was brought in as coach as it was felt he could command respect in the dressing room among Holland’s notoriously divided players.

Former Ajax Amsterdam and Barcelona coach Louis van Gaal emerged as an early contender for the vacancy.

Former Dutch international Arnold Muhren, a team-mate of Rijkaard in the 1988 European Championship winning Oranje’ side, was one of the first to call for Van Gaal.

“I think he’d be a good National manager, he did a great job at Ajax and at Barcelona,” Muhren told the onefootball.com website.