Picture the following scenario. You rock up to work and tell your boss he can expect to see results from the project that you’re in charge of in, no worries, an odd twenty to thirty years.

Yes, even though the company share price plummeted the day before to a record low due to mistakes by your team, there’s no need to panic.

Despite becoming an international laughing stock, along with reports in the media suggesting heads should roll, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

You tell your boss to realise that Japanese companies in the past, just like yours, were in the doldrums – but decades after reached great heights. Boss, put your feet up and relax! 2040, here we come!

If you actually did the above, chances are your boss would have you packing your stuff in a cardbox box – maybe escorted out the door by security.

Yet this “thirty years” excuse is exactly what the Dutch “masters” in charge of Australian football development are using – and incredibly seem to be getting away with – to justify keeping their place in the FFA hierarchy.

Their excuses come in defence of the Young Socceroo’s recent 5-1 thrashing by Spain that had our youngsters sent packing from Colombia at the FIFA U-20s World Cup tournament, after finishing at rock bottom place in their group.

Australia had never before in history conceded five goals in a match at an U-20s World Cup.

Following the Spanish smashing, Han Berger, the FFA’s Chief Dutch Overlord and “National Technical Director”, explained, with a straight face, that the way forward can only be found by being more ‘patient’.

“It took over a century in South America and in Europe to get to the level where they are now,” Berger said.

“It took meanwhile, I think, twenty to thirty years in Japan to get to the level where they are now, and you can really see now the results of the whole process…

“So it will be the same in Australia. We have to be patient – there is no other way.”

What makes Berger’s statement all the more insulting is that he conveniently ignores Australia’s very proud history of performance in Youth World Cups prior to the Dutch “takeover”.

Pre-“Dutch” Aussie Youth World Cup teams reached the final against Brazil at the ’99 tournament, the semi-finals in ’91 and ’93, and at least the quarter-finals stage in every decade since the 1980’s right through to 2005 – just before the Dutch took over. We haven’t even had a measly quarter-finals appearance since.

The period particularly in the 90’s, when Australia made it to at least the semi-finals three times in the space of less than ten years, was no fluke. It is a fact – and a benchmark – that cannot credibly be ignored or forgotten by those who now hold the reigns.

Berger’s Dutch partner in crime at the FFA is of course Jan Versleijen, Australia’s youth coach who led our U-20s to their Spanish slaughter.

As you would recall, Jan even more embarrassingly oversaw the Joey’s June exit from the Mexico U-17s World Cup, after a humiliating 4-0 defeat by lowly Uzbekistan.

Versleijen explained that our thrashing in Colombia was not down to him, of course, but those pesky Australian players of ours.

“It is very obvious that, in the first 15 minutes of this game, especially in the backline, we had some players that were not at a World Cup level”, Versleijen said.

Just to make sure we got the point, Jan also stated, “I don’t want to mention names, but against individual mistakes you cannot coach and you cannot train”.

What we actually have here is a coach who is not at “World Cup level”. Someone who must no longer be allowed to coach or train our youth.

The case for the highly-paid Versleijen to stay is laughable at best, especially when comparing his record to that of, say, local coach Les Scheinflug who, given maybe some travel money, took our youth teams to the final and semi-finals in those tournaments in the 90’s.

Scheinflug, last week, rightly called for Versleijen to be sacked, amongst others. Les’ views on FFA appointments affecting youth development warrant serious consideration, taking into account that he is undeniably one of the most successful FIFA Youth World Cup coaches of all time.

Versleijen, an L-plater in comparison at World Cup level, reacted by saying, “Why should I comment on what Les Scheinflug thinks. He has no role at all any more and I am not interested in reacting to what he thinks or says.”

Jan unwittingly highlighted an invaluable point in his attempted non-response. That someone like Scheinflug has “no role at all any more” in Australian football is a travesty that needs correcting, and is a sign that something is fundamentally rotten in the game’s administration.

Our Dutch overlords, all too comfortable up there on their high horses – with no signs of being dismounted anytime soon – are too easily getting away with their nonsense excuses, which contain more spin than a windmill.

Versleijen, after the atrocities seen under his watch in Egypt, Mexico and Colombia, has been given yet another free pass to lead our youth to another slaughter, in another continent, in another tournament. Currently, he is taking our U-16s to the AFC qualifiers in Thailand – and is not due to be debriefed by the FFA until he returns to Australia in October. Unbelievable.

Han and Jan are getting away with all this for a number of reasons.

Firstly, they are accountable to people such as the FFA CEO in Ben Buckley, who knows more about sporting competitions where you get points for missing.

The ex-coxswain FFA “Head Of Football Development”, John Boultbee, is all out at sea when it comes to intricate issues of a sport which takes place on land.

The AFL Bloke and The Rower report to an ex-sausage-maker FFA chairman whose best days are clearly behind him.

Frank Lowy has done a lot of big things for Australian football over the various eras. However, going by recent efforts, one has to question how effective he is anymore for the progression of the sport in this nation.

Take his last pet project, the Australian World Cup bid. Frank is on record as saying that the day before the bid took place in Zurich, the people voting shook his hand, looked him in the eye, and told him, “I’m with you”.

Then after Australia’s embarrassing first-round 21-1 exit in the voting process the following day, a doe-eyed Frank explained, “People told us one thing and another happened. I was not expecting this.”

Frank was duped. Just like he has been duped by these post-Hiddink no-name Dutch hacks who looked him in the eye, shook his hand and promised a glorious new era for Australian football. It has turned out to be anything but.

Part of the reason that the “thirty years” mantra keeps gaining traction is because those at the very top of the FFA who should shoot it down and have no bar of it, prefer not to, as they selfishly use it in their favour to fool a gullible media and a gullible public.

This convenient excuse, provided by the sly Dutch foxes, has a handy two-fold effect. Not only do the imposters use it to protect their own orange behinds, but it’s also one that their heads-in-the-sand paymasters can use themselves to duck for cover.

The Sausage Maker, The AFL Bloke and The Rower wouldn’t even know who to replace this mafia with if they got rid of them, such is their lack of football nous.

The sycophantic Australian football media also must take their share of the blame.

Craig Foster, SBS’ “Chief Football Analyst”, whilst rightly calling for Jan’s head, still hums along to the triple-decade mantra, and has not called for Berger – chief spruiker of this mantra – to be removed. And Foster is supposedly the most critical voice we have in the football media. Pathetic.

The cringe-worthy Foster was calling for “parades” two years ago after Jan saw the Joeys, after three straight losses, finish bottom of their group at the 2009 Egypt U-17s World Cup.

Whilst Craig was getting the ticker-tape ready and putting on his party hat – wiser, older heads who had been around the game for much longer than Foster – already had called the Dutch bluff for what it was.

Local Australian coaches, in the mould of Les Scheinflug, were warning whoever would listen about the pale orange shade “new” Australian football had allowed itself to be coloured and tainted by. When Foster and the football media weren’t ridiculing these “dinosaurs of the past”, they were ignoring them.

It took Foster over three years after Jan’s appointment to wake up and demand his sacking.

When Han and Jan’s fellow edam-muncher, Pim Verbeek, took the reigns of the Socceroos in 2007, these same, wiser, older heads were likewise warning of what a disastrous appointment this would turn out to be, whilst Craig had, true to form, taken a ‘wait and see’ approach.

Sure enough, three years later, after the Durban Disaster, Craig woke up to what those more knowledgeable than himself had warned of, and called for Pim to go. But that was three years too late. After the fact.

One only had to take a closer look at the CVs of these Z-grade Hiddink-clones to see that they never should have been appointed in the first place. Craig never did, just like The Sausage Maker, The AFL Bloke and The Rower hadn’t.

In 1999-2000, Jan took his second division Dutch team to the heights of stone, motherless, last place.

The season after, he took another second division Dutch team to stone, motherless, last place, again.

Just like he took our Joeys and Young Socceroos in their World Cup groups to rock bottom place, in 2009, and again in 2011.

Can you see a pattern here?

Pim had on his record the fine accolade of coaching that feared football powerhouse of Netherlands Antilles.

When he finally got the chance to coach a ‘real’ team, South Korea, he was derided by the fans and his administration alike.

In Verbeek’s first major tournament coaching South Korea at the 2007 Asian Cup, after playing a most negative type of football, his team didn’t score a single goal in over 320 minutes of football. He managed only a solitary win against Indonesia in the group stage.

The Koreans were smart enough to get rid of Pim straight away, as they realised they had reached the time to end their fascination with pale orange post-Hiddink wannabes.

South Korea under a South Korean coach, went on to progress out of the group stage in the 2010 World Cup, whilst Australia, under South Korea’s Dutch reject – who successfully sold his dodgy wares to a naive FFA – predictably didn’t.

In 1974, with local coach Rale Rasic in charge, the Socceroos lost 3-0 to a German side at the FIFA World Cup. Over “thirty years” later, at the 2010 World Cup, the Socceroos with Verbeek – one of the highest-paid coaches in the tournament – in charge, lost 4-0 to the Germans.

Is this the sort of “progress” after another “thirty years” we can expect to see by keeping the Dutch in charge? Should we expect to lose 5-0 to the Germans should we meet them at the 2042 World Cup?

Berger’s record is about as poor as that of his clog-wearing mates. Han, Jan and Pim would struggle to find a serious coaching gig back home in their native Netherlands.

Why do you think Verbeek is coaching the Under 21 C-graders in Morocco?

These KNVB rejects of their ilk are the football equivalent of the Indian telemarketers who persistently call you at unwanted hours trying to lock you in to their rebadged phone plans. The FFA are stupid enough not to hang up on these schemers.

Yes, we did have success with Hiddink – as you would hope for from a proven, genuine, first-rate international coach, sought all over the world, on the sort of coin we were paying him.

However, those that have come after him are all second-rate opportunists riding in Guus’ coat-tails. They hardly deserve to be Hiddink’s cone carriers. They rely solely on their orange link with Guus to have any hope of their sales pitch succeeding. They have nothing else in common with him.

They are not the real deal. This has been proven by their results. If John Aloisi’s penalty kick had not gone in, the sales pitch for these snake oil shysters would have been all the harder for them to spruik.

They should really be giving Johnny a cut of the huge wages they are on. If it weren’t for his heroics, they may very well have ended up selling Power Balance wrist-bands to this day to make a living, or perhaps installing Pink Batts if they had still fancied working in Australia.

For someone who claims to be a “Chief Football Analyst”, Craig Foster has been far too late in recognising the horrible appointments made by the FFA after Hiddink predictably departed to more lucrative shores.

Whilst Foster can provide useful insights and analysis into events after they happen, he is very poor at making hard calls about tough decisions that must be taken before events take place.

Success, as most successful people will tell you, is more about being proactive than reactive. Foster’s comments usually skew toward the latter.

I don’t know about you, but like Scheinflug – and unlike Foster, SBS, and the vast majority of the Australian football media – I’m not prepared to subscribe to the thirty year club and wait until 2040 to see how Berger’s “grand vision” turns out. You have to be kidding.

Also responsible for their part in keeping the Dutch mafia in place, are the fans. Since 2005, the Australian football fan-base demographic has undoubtedly skewed to a higher percentage of those new to the game – who have no memory of Australian football events prior to 2005, except those that involved an oval-shaped ball. If you mention the name Scheinflug to them, they might guess it is a brand of German coffee machine.

The fans know no better. The football media should know better. The result being that The Sausage Maker, The AFL Bloke, and The Rower are left unaccountable, and get away with doing nothing.

The solution to all this is rather simple.

The FFA should change their approach to a solution that is instantly available, that has been tried, tested and proven – time and time again. Put back in place good local coaches to lead our national youth teams.

Unlike the pale orange alternatives, local coaches have repeatedly advanced us to the latter stages of these Youth World Cup tournaments. There is also the added benefit of local coaches not charging us an arm and a leg.

The obscene amount of money lining the pockets of our Dutch overlords comes from the obscene registration and playing fees paid for by mums and dads of the little Johnnys and the little Jills, along with anyone else having a kick at the park in their local competitions. We’ve been fleeced enough.

The over-arching, inflexible 4-3-3 formation system that is being spruiked as the centre-piece of this grand thirty-year Dutch vision is another thing that needs serious scrutiny.

How come the Dutch allow themselves to do away with this supposedly compulsory formation whenever they feel the need – for example at Jan’s Spanish Slaughter or Pim’s Durban Disaster – whilst treating any non-Dutch local coach as a criminal if they ever express a desire to do likewise? Hypocrites.

The reality is this 4-3-3 paper formation is spewed out by Berger to make it look like he is doing something fancy to warrant the huge pay-check the FFA keeps paying him. If you look at it any other way you are simply buying the snake oil.

If you put the likes of Iniesta, Messi and Villa in a 4-4-2 or a 3-5-2, they’d still outplay 99% of opponents using whatever formation they used, be it 4-3-3 or otherwise.

The debate over youth development has been unbelievably hijacked by this 4-3-3 paper system, which of course suits the agenda of Berger & Co.

Coaching of technique is not reliant on any paper formation. Implementation of this unnecessarily rigid system will result in a lack of flexibility that our youth could otherwise learn to take advantage of in their development, as formations come in and out vogue as they always do.

Unfortunately, the likes of Foster in the media have again been duped on this one, hence their incessant cheerleading of this paper system smokescreen.

As for Berger’s other favourite, behind-protecting mantra – “development over results” – if our performances on the park against Uzbekistan, Spain, or just about any other national team we have played in youth tournaments in the last few years are any indication, our “development” is clearly going backwards as well.

When our elite youth were coached by the likes of Scheinflug, our top players made their way into the top leagues of the world at a steady rate. In 2005, prior to the takeover of our youth systems, there were far more Australians in the world’s No. 1 football competition – the English Premier League – then there are today.

Football is a sport that is very hard at international level for most nations (and clubs) to consistently succeed at. It takes a lot of skill, and a lot of luck.

One thing it is not though is a brand of rocket science or astrophysics that can only be administered and understood by foreigners, like those in charge would have us believe, in the aim of serving their own interests. Berger & Co are not NASA, and won’t be taking us to the moon – don’t kid yourselves.

The Dutch imposters are taking advantage of our cultural cringe, and the likes of Foster in the football media are cluelessly supporting them in their advantageous patronisation of us.

Enough is enough. Han and Jan, now off on your bikes – perhaps into the Moroccan sunset, where maybe your mate Pim has some suitable D-grade jobs lined up for you. We don’t want anymore of your ‘help’, thankyou very much.

It’s time to ditch the Dutch.