Netherlands have ended their trio of friendlies with an impressive 2-0 win over Austria in Vienna.
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Steven Berghuis and Vincent Janssen were the stars of Netherlands 2-1 win over Poland on Wednesday and the duo combined again after only nine minutes to open the scoring. Berghuis’s cross from the right deflected into the air and Janssen found himself free in the middle to nod in his third international goal in five games.
Coach Danny Blind talked up Austria as the strongest of the three nations Netherlands faced in the past week, and the home side put the Oranje defence under pressure for most of the first half, but Jeroen Zoet made two excellent stops to deny Marko Arnautovic and Zlatko Junuzovic.
Quincy Promes nearly made it 2-0 before the break but his deflected strike came back off the post, and early in the second half Janssen could only fire a Kenny Tete cross wide of the post. Janssen was forced off through injury just after the hour mark and his replacement Luuk de Jong played a large part in Netherlands second goal as he laid the ball off for Georginio Wijnaldum to curl it into the bottom corner.
Tonny Vilhena came off the bench to make his national team debut, and before the end another substitute should have made it 3-0, but Marco van Ginkel could only head Promes cross wide.
The victory is another sign of progress from the Oranje and provides some needed confidence in the national team ahead of the World Cup qualifiers in September. Netherlands are back in action on the 1st of September against Greece before starting the qualifiers five days later in Sweden.
Well i saw some improvement that gives me hope for the future,and there are some points to be taken in consideration for the future!
The key player of this team is strootman,van gaal changed from 4-3-3 to 3-5-2 only because of strootman’s absence in brazil 2014.
Zoet should be first choise.
I was impressed from the defensive solidity of bruma and van dijk and with the return of de vrij things will only get better!
With van aanholt’s performance i would choose him over willems.
The creativity in midfield is what the team lacks most,wijnaldum is a good player but sometimes he is just not enough.
Promes and the other player on the right did good enough,but being used to see robben create and score on his own there’s a huge difference,so i still hope depay turns his fortune to become the succesor of robben.
Janssen is a blessing,hope he finds a team in a stronger league where he can get better.
“but being used to see robben create and score on his own there’s a huge difference” Is Robben out of the Dutch team forever – Won’t he be there even for the first few Qualifiers ? Jusdt curious to know..
If he’s fit he’ll surely be there. If he scores at the next World Cup he’ll be only the fifth player in history to score a goal in 4 world cups.
Also, in Berghuis, it looks like we’ve got a good back up for Robben. The enthusiasm he’s showing has been sorely lacking. And he’s willing to have a go and put crosses into Janssen rather than playing priority possession football, a tired old philosophy that is stifling Dutch football. Possession football is only good if its about creating chances. If you can create more (quality) chances doing it another way, then it should be done.
If Berghuis and Robben appear to be the men for one wing spot. Who steps up for the other. Personally I hope El Ghazi has a great upcoming season and grabs the left wing spot. His speed and range of skills are something the team desperately needs. Quincy and Memphis should then fight it out to see who the back up.
Robben is 32 years old,and he has been hit with injyries through his entire career and he is still injured,if he is fit,i know he makes a big difference,but can you count on him?do you know when the next injury is gonna happen?u remember against iceland,he was the best player on the field,but left the game injured.unfortunately there is no one to take his place at the moment!
Good result, Holland is slowly coming back to level.