Fulham striker Ryan Babel has questioned the changes in Dutch coaching over the years.

Babel believes an emphasis on statistics has hurt Dutch football.

He told Voetbal International: "All of a sudden statistics started to play an important role.

"How I was trained as a striker at Ajax, it didn't even count how much you scored yourself. You had to be clever, run and always go to the first post. If you had a good command of those parts, nothing was wrong. Because: if you didn't score, you enabled the number 10 to do that."

He continued, “Did you have strikers that would score twenty plus goals in the Netherlands, which I personally did not like at all, but which was hugely hyped?

"Ajax had to buy Alfred Finnbogasson, just to give an example. With all due respect, great player, but Ajax's striker? Didn't he have to master completely different things?"