Who told them Scottish football players couldn’t score goals? And why did they use this rumor as a substitute for their own game idea? The first appearance of the European Championship year puzzled fans and followers of the Dutch team until well into the second half.
That’s why the clear 4-0 win that “Oranje” scored against the “Tartan Boys” in Amsterdam on Friday evening belongs to the category of disproportionate results: it does not come close to reflecting the scoring chances and game shares that were achieved during the football game in the Johan -Cruyff Arena could be observed.
Every duel is lost
Bond coach Ronald Koeman had changed the starting eleven to nine positions compared to the previous game in the European Championship qualification (6-0 against Gibraltar). However, the players, organized in the classic 4-3-3 system, were not completely strangers to each other – they were just surprised at how high and determined the Scots disrupted their opening game. This was especially true for the first thirty minutes.
Almost every duel between the two penalty areas was lost for the Dutch. In addition, the six players in front of the back four often slowed themselves down with improper passing. But what the back four, synchronized by Virgil van Dijk, could no longer defend, the Scottish offensive did not know how to exploit – or was clarified by the in-form Mark Flekken, who guarded the goal at SC Freiburg from 2018 to 2021.
So you watched a team that didn’t want to reward itself at all and another that seemed to rely on it. Until they even took the lead in the 40th minute – because the player with the iconic number 14 let loose a dry long-range shot from twenty meters that hit the top left corner. In earlier times, Johan Cruyff, who became a world star with this shirt number, would have been for such moments ensured.
Three goals in the last twenty minutes
Now Oranje at least has Tijjani Reijnders, who is currently doing almost everything. The 25-year-old midfielder fought for a starting place in his first season for AC Milan and stood out so clearly in his seventh international match that Koeman praised him as “hard to imagine our team without”.
What was all the more difficult because he hardly found any kind words, especially for the Bundesliga professionals Xavi Simons (RB Leipzig) and Jeremie Frimpong (Bayer Leverkusen). Reijnders’ goal brought a little more security into the game for the Dutch, while the Scots increasingly reduced their chances after wasting further opportunities.
With three goals in the last twenty minutes, the Elftal were able to make the game evenly balanced (13:13) than it had been for a long time. Reijnders set another highlight when he set Donyell Malen, who was indispensable in Dortmund, with a pass before the 4-0 win. However, there was no shortage of criticism of the performance afterwards.
“It has to get a lot better”
The “Algemeen Dagblad”, for example, saw “an Orange without automatisms” in which many people simply “struggle”. “Voetbal International” had a similar opinion about the Bond coach, who was once the pioneer of a golden generation of players: “Ronald Koeman gets more questions than answers against Scotland.” However, that was clear to the pragmatist himself. “If you make mistakes like that in the setup, the system won’t work,” he summed up unmistakably after the final whistle. “It needs to get a lot better.”
Koeman has declared the months leading up to the start of the tournament to be a test phase in which formations should be tried out – especially now that an important player in midfield, Frenkie de Jong (ankle injury), is missing.
Christopher Meltzer, Lyon Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 16 Hans-Günter Kellner, Madrid Published/Updated: Recommendations: 3 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 9
The FC Barcelona professional cannot take part in the 47th neighborhood duel this Tuesday (8.45 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the national football team and on RTL) in Frankfurt against Germany. The bond coach would like to make his starting lineup more stable with some personnel changes. For example, by deploying Denzel Dumfries instead of Frimpong on the right wing and Teun Koopmeiners in the center in place of Xavi, who is still looking for his role at Oranje.
