Relief for the Orange after a spasmodic victory over Portugal in the first game at the World Cup

The World Cup has only partially started according to plan for the Netherlands. The team of national coach Andries Jonker managed to win the first match 1-0 against Portugal, but failed to entertain the twelve thousand spectators with good play. Linking results to attractive football will be the objective in the coming matches.

Because with group matches against the United States (Thursday at 3 a.m. Dutch time) and Vietnam (Tuesday, August 1 at 9 a.m.) ahead, the Netherlands is already with one leg in the eighth finals.

In any case, the pressure is off for the Orange – for the moment. Jonker’s team regarded the opening game against the Southern Europeans as so crucial that almost everything was focused on this during the preparation during training camps in Zeist, Horst, Sydney and Tauranga. A good result against Portugal was of great importance in a group with world champions USA.

The respect for Portugal’s qualities turned out to be much too great afterwards. The team of national coach Francisco Neto did not get further than one shot on target from substitute Telma Encarnação.

The Netherlands was simply too big for the debuting Portugal in Dunedin. After a somewhat tense start to the game, the Dutch took a 1-0 lead in the thirteenth minute after a striking header from Stefanie van der Gragt from a well-placed corner kick by captain Sherida Spitse. The goal was initially rejected due to Jill Roord’s offside, but the Ukrainian referee Kateryna Monzul ruled after studying the images that the Dutch had not hindered the keeper.

The Dutch national team was not able to enforce more than a handful of chances and fell back so far in the second half that Portugal still believed in a draw. It didn’t come to that. The relief could be read on the faces of the Orange camp afterwards.

Emigrated Dutch

The Dutch national team was supported in Dunedin by approximately eight hundred Orange fans who were divided in tufts across the stands. Part of the Dutch people who had emigrated to New Zealand, in particular, had completed the traditional march of Orange fans from the city center The Octagon to the Dunedin Stadium over 1.8 kilometers. They had not let the bad weather stop them and thus provide a bit of a World Cup atmosphere in New Zealand where rugby and cricket are more popular than football.

The Dutch national team had little trouble with the winter weather in Dunedin. After breakfast, the selection took a short walk under the contiguous canopies of the shops and restaurants on Princes Street and George Street. And once in New Zealand’s only indoor stadium, the fresh atmosphere was in the advantage for Andries Jonker’s team against the Portuguese.

The Dutch national team started the World Cup according to the system that Jonker had envisioned for weeks. The so-called 3-5-2 formation was the final piece of the long preparation, which started a month after the disappointing European Championship in 2022.

After his appointment, the national coach first had to restore the broken team spirit that had arisen under his predecessor Mark Parsons, who was dismissed. With qualification against Iceland, the first big step was immediately taken in September last year.

Jonker then started building a new team in which confidence, courage and good football were the key concepts. Initially, he let the Netherlands lay a new foundation with the familiar 4-3-3 system, before switching to a modern style of play that, according to the coach, best suits his selection. Although Jonker stated in Dunedin that his team can switch from one system to the other at any time. In his eyes, that should make Orange unpredictable for opponents.

Yellow-eyed penguins

The Dutch national team played only one official international match in the run-up to the World Cup in the ideal composition. That was at the beginning of this month in Kerkrade when the Orange won a farewell game with Belgium 5-0. Just before the departure for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the Orange had a good feeling about this. That will have partly disappeared after the mediocre performance against Portugal.

The Dutch national team will complete a training session in Dunedin on Monday before it will again bridge a distance of 1,300 kilometers to the base camp in Tauranga with a charter flight. The climate difference between the two cities is huge. Not far from the Otago Peninsula, where albatrosses, yellow-eyed penguins, fur seals and sea lions have their habitat, the Orange had to deal with hours of rain showers during match day in the South Island.

The expected sun in Tauranga will make the wind chill during the training sessions on the North Island comfortable again. Only the training field present there, where a rock-hard plate to protect part of the cricket field makes playing eleven against eleven impossible, will again cause headaches for the national coach who wants to inspire new generations with attractive play.