Who could have honestly imagined such an outcome in this group D? Again this morning, almost everywhere, everyone was wondering who would finish in first place between the Netherlands, leaders before the kick-off of the last day, and France, second and in search of the precious sesame to inherit for the best part of the table in eighths. At least there will be no jealous people: it will be neither for one nor the other. But good for Austria, who beat the Oranje (3-2) in Berlin, benefiting at the same time from the Blues’ draw against Poland (1-1).
Disappointed as much as disappointing, the Dutch, certainly already qualified, were quite stunned at the end of this lost battle. “The match against France went relatively well, considering the result we played pretty well as a team. Today’s performance was terrible“, declared Ronald Koeman at a press conference. Some “players played badly 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 sideline, blaming his players for having chained “errors“.
“I can name a number of them“, he pressed, “We started off very badly in many ways. We didn’t defend well. There were too many spaces for the opponent“. “We weren’t aggressive. We also lost the ball a lot, especially at the beginning. We were really bad“, said Koeman, as his team managed to come back from behind twice before finally losing.We failed to play football. In the second half things improved but it wasn’t enough“, analyzed Dutch striker Cody Gakpo on the Dutch channel NOS.
Gakpo equalizes against Austria
Credit: Getty Images
Something has to change
Captain Virgil van Dijk felt that it was necessary that “something changes“before the rest of the competition.”We are all responsible for this situation, there is not one or two guilty…“, said the defender on Dutch television. According to him, “we started weak… we were too weak in duels, I don’t have an explanation for that at the moment“.
“We talked about it at half-time, (playing like that) is not possible, we know it, we have to do much better“, continued the captain of the Oranje, who equalized for the first time just after returning from the locker room (1-1, 47th). Before falling back into their mistakes, to finally give in a third time at the very end of the match. If their qualification was acquired before this match, its epilogue makes the rest of the operations more uncertain.If we want to do something in this tournament, something has to change…“, a conclusion Van Dijk.
 | Very bitter Oranje: “A terrible performance”){kind=link}