With the European championships in their final week, the wound left by the Dutch defeats is healing slowly. But the weekend newspapers can’t help picking at the scab.

The NRC spoke to (unnamed) sources ‘around the national team’ and striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar emerges clearly the villain of the piece, together with a far too indulgent Bert van Marwijk.
‘One convincing victory and Van Marwijk would have been able to control his unruly team of prima donnas’, the paper writes. Instead a sorry saga unfolds. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, who has been told twice by his trainer he won’t be playing, is ‘beside himself with anger’, the sources say.
He has scored twelve times during the qualifiers and he thinks he has a right to play. He finds a sympathetic ear in Rafael van der Vaart who also ends up on the bench, ‘outwardly calm but seething inside’, a source who saw him seething says.
After the defeat by Denmark the team becomes hopelessly divided. ‘It’s a mutiny. Huntelaar keeps stirring things up. Never in his career as trainer has van Marwijk had to deal with a player as bothersome as this. The other players also think he is out of line. He is constantly putting himself first’, the paper writes.
Meanwhile, the Telegraaf is pushing for Huntelaar and Van Marwijk caves in, losing the respect of Arjen Robben who thinks the team needs a much firmer hand. Huntelaar plays against Portugal. But the damage has been done
Unpopular

The NRC quotes one source as saying: ‘The players have had it with Huntelaar, I wonder if he still has a future as a player on the national team. I think there would be a revolt if he is selected again. Hardly anyone wants to play with him.’
The Volkskrant has tales of fisticuffs between the team doctor and a frustrated reserve player unwilling to take a test for drugs and a coach shouting himself hoarse at the team each day while son-in-law Mark van Bommel loses all credibility with the players.
‘It’ll be the tournament of the player (Arjen Robben, DN) who told his coach to ‘shut up the f*** up’’, the paper writes. In another article in the same paper the paper takes a stab at explaining this extraordinary attitude. Players are suffering from ‘rampant vanity’, and not just when it comes to outfits and hair do’s, the Volkskrant thinks.
Spoilt
‘Inflated egos suddenly became the main hurdle. What else could it be? It has been two years since 2010. Players have gone on to even bigger clubs. They have more money and have become more spoilt. Nobody tells them they’re wrong. With every day that passed it became that little bit harder to return to the basic principle which should underlie their game: a focus on the team effort’, the paper writes.
The paper asked ‘image specialist’ Zabeth van Veen. ‘Football players are young and immature. Fame gives them a distorted self image,’ Van Veen said.
‘The people around them all want something from them. Nobody corrects them. Their wives or girlfriends often depend on them financially. There’s a big difference between finding fame at 40 and at 18. Everyone tells you you’re fantastic. They start to believe it and the ego trip starts. You can’t blame them really’.
But all may not be not lost. ‘At the end of the tournament Rafael van der Vaart and Dirk Kuijt urged players to take a good look in the mirror. And they didn’t mean to check their hair’, the paper points out.