Editor’s note: The Dutch national team’s account hadn’t added the game’s highlights at the time of publication; they finally did, so you can now find them at the bottom of this post.
A win’s a win, right?
This was one of those games where you take the three points and run. Similar to the Germany game, there were a number of missed chances that should’ve made the scoreline more complimentary to the Dutch. But those shots will start falling. I imagine it takes a minute to get used to a new system, the instructions of a new coach, and the novelty of finding yourself in new positions on the field. Once the players grow more accustomed to everything, the net will begin to bulge more often. We have to remember that this is the result of just about one week total of up-close time for Xavi with his players.
The standout player was, of course, the man who scored both of the goals: Mexx Meerdink. Like Ruben van Bommel, his former teammate at AZ Alkmaar, Meerdink plays the game with a sense of composure that is unusual for such a young player (he’s 23), which was shown in his ability to bang that first goal, a penalty kick, into the right side of the goal. His second goal—a shot from the left hand side, from a tight angle, that he had to get just right—was more proof that suddenly, the Dutch have depth in a position that has plagued them since Robin van Persie’s retirement.
Honestly, this is a common theme for the current state of the squad: suddenly, there aren’t really any “problem positions” anymore. I remember the worries of not having quality strikers, not having quality wingers, and not having quality goalies.
All of those worries have now (mostly) dissipated in the last few years.
We’ve now got two top-quality goalkeepers in Bart Verbruggen and Robin Roefs, both under 25. Verbruggen has started the two games of this international break so far, and I’ll be curious to see if Roefs is given a chance to show his talents against Greece and (again) Serbia.
In 2022, Louis van Gaal opted for a lineup without wingers—instead playing with five defenders, the leftmost and rightmost of which would bring the width usually supplied by wingers—because as he said, there just wasn’t enough quality at the position. Nowadays, we’ve all seen Crysencio Summerville break through at the World Cup, Cody Gakpo remains elite, and Ruben van Bommel is on the path to stardom himself. Not to mention Ro-Zangelo Daal coming through at AZ Alkmaar.
Side note: I really, really hate the fact that we’re never going to see Louis van Gaal win a World Cup for the Netherlands. It’s a shame that of the two times he’s tried (2014 and 2022), it’s been with two of the weaker squads the Dutch have had since the turn of the 21st century. Obviously, we’re not going to mention the failure to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. If only it had been Van Gaal at the helm this past summer… something I could rue forever.
And lastly, the strikers. Brian “Brobbeast” Brobbey is finally becoming the well-rounded striker that we all thought he’d be when he first broke out in 2020. And now, thanks to his injury, Mexx Meerdink has been given the chance to show that he, too, is deserving of a starting spot. This doesn’t even include arguably the best Dutch striker at the moment, Donyell Malen, who unfortunately hasn’t provided the same abundance of goals for the national team that he has at AS Roma in Italy, but who will be eager to get a new chance under Xavi to show that he can transport his talents outside of a Roma shirt. And there’s still the promise of 23-year-old Emmanuel Emegha (Chelsea 🏴), who at one point looked to be the future at the position himself. I won’t mention the possibility of Shaqueel van Persie—the son of our most recent world-class striker—since he has a choice of playing for either the Netherlands or Morocco because of his mother; aside from the absurdity of seeing “Van Persie” on the back of a Moroccan shirt, the 19-year-old looks supremely talented. Fingers crossed he follows in his father’s footsteps à la Ruben van Bommel, but the desperation for him to choose the Netherlands has waned.
It’s also easy to forget that for all the discussion of Joey Veerman, our “new” midfield maestro who admitted in a postgame interview today that the horrors of 2024 are fully behind him, we also usually have Frenkie de Jong—arguably the best Dutch player in the world—in the team. I sigh to think about how much better Euro 2024 would have been if De Jong had not missed out due to injury.
Veerman was, once again, a standout performer today. Every time he gets the ball, you sit up in your seat—you get the sense that he is, at all times, one pass (or shot) away from creating a goal. This does unfortunately come at a cost, specifically him being a total liability on defense; but hey, NBA teams that want to win games still hire James Harden for a reason.
And so, with the three points today (2.7 Expected Goals!) against a very defensive team in a foreign environment, we march on. Suddenly, after Greece beat Germany following the Dutch game, the most interesting matchup of this break may be the one that falls on Thursday afternoon at 2:45pm (viewable on Fox Soccer Plus), against the Greeks in Thessaloniki. When they played Serbia earlier this week, I remember seeing their squad and thinking to myself, boy, they’ve sneakily got some quality players. Their goalie, Konstantinos Tzolakis, starts for an English Premier League team, Hull City. Left-back Kostas Tsimikas plays for Liverpool. Wide player Christos Tzolis (hey Eredivisie fans, remember him at FC Twente?) just completed a big-money move to Arsenal over the summer for a reason. Eredivisie fans will also remember their star striker Vangelis Pavlidis, now of Portugal’s legendary club Benfica, who played for Willem II before moving to AZ Alkmaar and becoming the Eredivisie’s top scorer in 2024. Sneaky good, these Greeks are. And today’s 1-0 win over Germany—who had the ball 3/4ths of the time, mind you—shows that Xavi’s team will need to be in tip-top shape to nab a win.
Do that, and we can start dreaming of winning the Nations League. I don’t care if it’s glorified friendlies: we need a damn trophy.