On Wednesday the Netherlands are playing England in a friendly at Wembley stadium. Bayern Munich winger Arjen Robben will be there. He talked to Nrc about Oranje, injuries and criticism.

Injury plagued Arjen Robben spent a long time not looking very closely at what his national team was doing, he tells the paper. ‘I make jokes about it but it really is quite sad to have missed so many opportunities to play for Oranje. I could have played 100 international games. I have to admit I haven’t seen Oranje play very often in the last two years. It was too upsetting.’
Injury
Robben has been suffering from a hamstring injury, a groin strain and irritation of the pubis all of which have conspired to keep him on the sidelines for two periods of six months, the paper writes. He then made a spectacular comeback during which he scored 12 goals in 14 games. Then it was injury time once more.
‘An injury to the pubis is very complicated and can take up to a year to heal’, Robben tells the paper. The player is putting a brave face on it but he isn’t pain free. ‘The adrenaline numbs the pain when you’re playing (..) During training it’s a different story. I expect I will be fit in a week or three.’
Flack
Robben, who was nicknamed ‘sick note’ at his old club Chelsea, has come in for a lot of flack from his team mates at Bayern, and from former Bayern player and honorary chairman Franz Beckenbauer. Robben is selfish, the club icon told interviewers. ‘After a good move or a goal he walks off and greets a member of his family or someone else instead of sharing the moment with the person who gave him the opportunity to score. He’s making the team run after him’, according to Der Kaiser.
Robben is not sure what to make of the criticism. ‘There are lots of silly things being sais about me. There’s really not a lot I can do about it’, he says. He discards trainer Van Marwijk’s suggestion that he should change his way of playing. ‘The beautiful thing about football is the way a situation can turn around. If I score twice or more things will be fine again. So I’m not too bothered by people’s opinions about me’, he tells the paper.
Wrong
People who say Oranje has had its day are wrong, Robben says. It maybe true that Wesley Sneijder and Dirk Kuijt are often sitting on the bench at their clubs and that Rafael van der Vaart too is injured but that’s a coincidence, he says. ‘Look at Robin van Persie. He’s having a great year.’