timeThe Dutch team has fans of this tournament. That may be little consolation for their late defeat to England in Dortmund, but it’s true. However, the huge crowds of Dutch fans who turned the city into a sea of orange were unable to help their team cross the finish line. Ultimately, it’s the players who lose.
After the Netherlands launched a fierce attack, did Memphis Depay’s injury change the course of the game? Or the penalty Denzel Dumfries received for a clearly inconsequential contact? Or is it what critics of Ronald Koeman’s side have been saying: that this team isn’t Dutch enough, not skilled enough in key areas, to secure late-game victories?
The last one felt like the last one. Depay was in and out of the game, and when he went down with a hamstring injury on the half-hour mark, it gave Koeman the chance to stop the bleeding. England dominated the first half after falling behind to Xavi Simons’ belt and the head coach had to strengthen his side. He did, and with first Joey Veerman and then Wout Weghorst joining the game, the Netherlands returned to the kind of compact, functional unit that could contain them for the long haul. England, but could not impose themselves properly. Finally, the dam burst.
Let’s go back and think about what will be an indelible memory for many Dutch fans. The party started around 9 a.m. and it soon became apparent that any estimate of the crowd was uncertain. orange At Dortmund, they were far behind. At 10 a.m., people were dancing in the streets to electronic dance music from orange pickup trucks. At 11am, the bar was packed. By 1pm, the streets were also packed with people.
The pre-match climax, naturally, was with the fan parade, which moved along the “green channel” from the city center to the stadium more than four hours before kick-off. Being there, it feels like a mix of the density of people at Notting Hill Carnival and the noise of a European night Kop, except people are hanging from lampposts, swaying from left to right, wearing all kinds of orange gear; from plastic; turbans to bishop’s mitres and humble toilet plugs.
Underground, the promised orange wall turned out to be an orange corner, curving around the southwest corner of Dortmund’s stadium. But the Dutch have plenty of energy to tap into, and Simmons is gobbling it up. His first goal happened in the blink of an eye. Tackles Declan Rice, breaks forward and beats the ball past Jordan Pickford in four touches. Simmons looked like a player who was told he could dominate on such a big stage, leading the media, connecting the play and becoming a symbol of the team’s strong start.
However, with Simmons in the No. 10 position, the two Dutch midfielders stand against the English striker and midfielder, who float in this position and occupy space. While England clearly backed themselves going into the game, the Netherlands struggled to hold on to their win and the fan noise began to subside. The penalty sparked controversy and subsequently the Dutch players seemed willing to insist on injustice as consolation, but their manager completely changed the team’s formation at half-time to mitigate England’s threat.
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These substitutions had the effect Koeman wanted, but it was the kind of adjustment he might have wanted to avoid. All the intensity of the high press and off the ball was gone. The sense of threat of attack has disappeared a lot. Instead, the Netherlands played the way Slovakia and Switzerland had done before them, adding numbers behind the ball and hoping to succeed from set pieces. That’s what his critics say about him.
With 15 minutes left in the second half, the whistle started to sound. But then Jeddy Schouten forced a Luke Shaw throw-in and the cheers were heard for the first time in a while. That pass was followed by a free-kick and Wellman floated an expert ball to the back post, where Virgil van Dijk’s touch forced a low save from Pickford.
That was enough to turn the momentum of the game around for a while. The game wasn’t pretty to watch, but as England struggled to unleash their dense formation and begin to press their attack, the Netherlands began to see more possession of the ball. Every England cross was fraught with danger. This in turn means England must change. With 10 minutes left Gareth Southgate did just that and the pendulum swung again, this time decisively against the Netherlands.
