The Netherlands were not kind to themselves after their defeat against Austria (3-2) on Tuesday June 25, in the last match of Group D. Netherlands captain Virgil van Dijk said on Tuesday that it was necessary that “something is changing”and coach Ronald Koeman said his team’s performance was “terrible”. Which did not prevent their qualification for the round of 16.
“We are all responsible for this situation, there is not one or two guilty… If we want to do something in this tournament, something has to change”said the Liverpool defender on Dutch television.
According to him, “we started weak… we were too weak in the duels, I don’t have an explanation for that at the moment”. Coming back twice, the Oranje finally lost to Austria, who created a surprise by finishing first in Group D ahead of France and the Netherlands. “We talked about it at half-time, (playing like that) is not possible, we know it, we have to do much better”added the captain, who equalized for the first time just after returning from the locker room (1-1, 47′).
“We were very bad”
Coach Ronald Koeman estimated that his players had been ” very bad “ : “The match against France went relatively well, considering the result we played pretty well as a team. Today the performance was terrible”.
Some “players played poorly in certain aspects… we have to follow our opponents and that’s not what happened”added the coach, who was annoyed throughout the match on his touchline, reproaching his players for having chained the “errors”.
“I can name a number of them”he insisted, “We started off very badly in many ways. We didn’t defend well. There were too many spaces for the opponent”.
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“We weren’t aggressive. We also lost the ball a lot, especially early on. We were really bad”said Koeman, while his team managed to come back from the score twice, before finally losing.
