Hamburg played host to an enthralling battle of two injury-ravaged sides on Sunday, as Poland took on the Netherlands at the Volksparkstadion. The game came just hours after a man wielding an axe was shot and seriously injured by police near the Dutch fan zone in the city’s Reeperbahn district.
The Oranje had arguably started as the better of the two sides, but Ronald Koeman’s men would soon find out that flair counts for nothing when Adam Buksa opened the scoring with a well-directed header.
The Dutch drew level just before the half-hour mark, though it would take until the final ten minutes of proceedings in Hamburg to seize the lead, with the decisive goal coming courtesy of substitute Wout Weghorst.
As it happened
Given the injury-enforced late withdrawals of Frenkie de Jong and Teun Koopmeiners from the Netherlands squad, you’d have been forgiven for expecting the Oranje to assert control of the midfield from the very start of Sunday’s clash.
That couldn’t have been further from reality though, with Memphis Depay dropping deeper at times to aid the link-up play between the lines – and it proved effective. Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo was unlucky not to open the scoring on the pivot with just two minutes on the clock, and neat interplay on the right culminated in Tijjani Reijnders blasting wide on the ten-minute mark.
Despite their early dominance, cracks began to appear in the Dutch defence – and it didn’t take long for Adam Buksa to capitalise, rising highest on the edge of the six-yard box from a corner to flick a header past Bart Verbruggen and send the Biało-czerwoni supporters into euphoria.
The Oranje wasted no time in searching for an equaliser, with Virgil van Dijk denied a sensational spinning effort just four minutes after Buksa’s opener. Depay would then be involved in two missed chances in quick succession: first blazing over the crossbar after promising work from Reijnders and Xavi Simons, before then delivering a cross that was just a yard too far forward for Gakpo.
But as the half-hour mark grew nearer, the Oranje finally restored parity. Nathan Aké won possession back high up the pitch, plahying the ball forward for Gakpo – and the Liverpool forward made no mistake this time around, driving towards goal and unleashing a bobbling effort that caught Wojciech Szczęsny off-guard.
Perhaps they should have taken the lead before the break, but Koeman’s men would be presented with a golden opportunity inside the first ten minutes of the second half, yet they’d fail to take that too. A blistering counterattack saw Depay played through on goal, though he opted to play the ball out wide for Simons – and the 21-year-old rolled wide of the near post.
Nicola Zalewski thundered an effort over the crossbar from the edge of the box shortly after the hour mark, before Denzel Dumfries curled a cross wide of the post. It was a frenetic finale to the match, with chances at either end: substitute Karol Świderski hestitated for too long at one end of the pitch, and Stefan de Vrij nodded marginally over soon after.
But the margins that had denied the Netherlands for the past eighty minutes would fall in their favour as the clock ticked into the final ten minutes, when substitute Wout Weghorst arrived off the bench to fire the Oranje into the lead. Arriving at the front post and getting the better of Bartosz Salamon, the 31-year-old’s composed finish sparked intense celebrations amongst the sizeable Dutch travelling contingent.
The result leaves the Netherlands at the top of Group D, with France set to face Austria in Düsseldorf tomorrow.
The lineups
POL: Szczęsny; Kiwior, Salamon, Bednarek; Romanczuk, Zieliński; Zalewski, S Szymanski, Urbański, Frankowski; Buksa
NED: Verbruggen; Aké, van Dijk, de Vrij, Dumfries; Veerman, Reijnders, Schouten; Gakpo, Depay, Simons
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