The Netherlands' Strengths, Weaknesses & How They'll Fare at Euro 2020
By Dom Smith
Things were looking distinctly sour for the Netherlands just a few years ago. Football – especially nice, pretty football – had long been the nation’s forte, but failure to reach both Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup highlighted the need to invest in youth.
Out went the likes of Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder; incredibly generous servants to the Dutch national side, but past their best and taking up valuable slots in the starting XI.
Euro 2020, should it indeed go ahead, looks like it’ll arrive at a near-perfect time for the Oranje, and that's down to judgement – not just luck. The job Ronald Koeman has done in reinstating the winning factor in Dutch international football has been nothing short of remarkable.
England remain the bookies' favourites to win the tournament (thanks to a mixture of market forces and hubris on the part of betters) but the Netherlands are there or thereabouts. Here, we assess some strengths and some weaknesses of this Dutch team. We’ll also predict how the competition will go for the 1988 edition’s winners.
Strengths
The issue many opponents have already faced – and will continue to face – when up against this Dutch side is their functionality as a unit. Perhaps leaving the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Frenkie de Jong aside, the current crop of Netherlands internationals are not ‘superstar players’.
The Netherlands are one of the favourites for Euro 2020. With a packed defence, a midfield oozing with class and some mercurial talents up front, the Dutch are being tipped for a strong Euro 2020 - if we get there, that is. The Flying Dutchmen follow.. https://t.co/8s4eAYgbe7
— Footy News (@footynew247) March 10, 2020
They don’t resemble the 2010 World Cup team that reached the final that year for example, as the stars (some of whom were namedropped in the intro) were proper global stars. This isn’t a team of stars, it’s a squad whose whole is more than the sum of its parts. Think of it as a more attractive and overall better version of Iceland...or Burnley.
Koeman’s side are very well-drilled in wide areas, where a mixture of highly athletic full-backs and wingers mean they ought to dominate the flanks in nearly every contest they compete in.
Big, strong, 6’1 right-back Denzel Dumfries offers something very different to Spurs’ slight and slippery wide-man Steven Bergwijn, but they both add considerable value to the team in their own ways. Beyond them, Quincy Promes, Justin Kluivert and many others can also do a job and a half out wide.
Central midfield, a position Koeman is all-too familiar with as a former seasoned Dutch international in that area of the pitch, offers the Netherlands real scope to dominate matches.
With De Jong, Georginio Wijnaldum and Donny van de Beek as his most adept operators, Koeman can call on a large number of skilful and tactically sound individuals. In turn, the Dutch become a skilful and tactically sound team in the middle of the park. You only have to look at Spain’s form between 2008 and 2012 to know how useful that can be.
Weaknesses
Memphis Depay looks increasingly likely to miss the tournament because of a cruciate ligament rupture sustained in a Ligue 1 game against Rennes in December.
Anyone who has watched the Netherlands in the last two and a bit years knows just how much that limits their chances of lifting the Henri Delaunay trophy again. Since November 2017, the former Manchester United winger has contributed a frightening 13 goals and 12 assists in just 20 games. That’s how important he is to the way this whole team functions.
The fact a natural wide-man like Depay has often been deployed as a lone striker of late introduces the next weakness – a lack of options at number nine.
In years gone by there has always been a Van Persie, a Marco van Basten or a Johnny Rep to turn to. Now though, one of the best options is Vincent Janssen. Bleak.
As you have to do in international football, Holland have rolled with the punches and adapted to a model that does fit with the players they have. A 4-3-3 with a false 9 was the inevitable formation they’ve employed. But that missing player, the lack of someone able to hold onto the ball, play faster teammates in, and sniff around in the box, may come back to haunt the Netherlands when the competition heightens and the tournament ramps up in later rounds.
Finally, by no means is it a crisis, but the Dutch have a worrying habit of losing concentration every now and then, allowing for inferior sides to grab a goal they didn't earn. The last two years have seen goals conceded to Slovakia, Peru, Northern Ireland and even Belarus.
It’s not been a problem yet, with the Netherlands winning all but one of those matches, but that coupled with a misfiring attack in future fixtures could well spell trouble. Fluid interchanges up front are wonderful to watch for the neutral, but the spaces they may leave open at the other end can be problematic.
Predictions
There isn’t much recent tournament history to inspect, as the Netherlands haven’t reached any for a few years...
And yet in the inaugural Nations League tournament held in the 2018/19 season, an unfancied Oranje side beat both Germany and world champions France to reach the finals, where they knocked out England in the semis.
Despite a one-goal defeat to Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal in the final, the feeling back home was that Holland had performed admirably. The feeling across Europe was clear – the Dutch are back.
Euro 2020 will be a real test as to whether or not the Nations League was just a flash in the pan. However, with top Dutch internationals experiencing success recently at Liverpool and Ajax, and following easy qualification for the tournament in a group also containing the Germans, the signs suggest they have indeed experienced a resurgence.
A group including Ukraine, Austria and one more to be decided via the new playoff system, looks winnable for the Oranje.
After that, Euro 2020 is mysterious, unknown, and unpredictable. One thing's for sure though – if there’s any team in Europe that can soak up immense pressure and then stun their opponents, knocking them out on the counter, it’s the Netherlands.
Prediction: Semi-finalists