Netherlands see off Senegal to seize control of Group A in World Cup
But they did have Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie up front, giving them the cutting edge to make their counter-attacking style dangerous. Without Memphis Depay, who was not fit enough to start, van Gaal’s starting attack was composed of two players who failed at Spurs: Steven Bergwijn and Vincent Janssen, supported by the tall PSV forward Cody Gakpo, who has been tearing up the Dutch league, but is still untested at the highest level.
The area where something seemed most likely to happen was on Senegal’s left wing, where Ismaila Sarr was up against the Netherlands’ right-sided centre back, Matthijs de Ligt. In 2017, the 17-year-old de Ligt became the youngest player to represent the Netherlands since the 1930s. Clearly, few are physically capable of competing at that level at 17 – but the powerfully-built de Ligt was already a man.
In the second half he did get booked for bodyslamming Sarr, then was left helplessly burned for pace by the winger. The problem was that Senegal never quite managed to turn these situations into the kind of combinations that open defences up. There were too many shots from wide angles towards the near post. The one time they did work the ball into a promising central goalscoring position, Idrissa Gueye blasted his shot straight at the 6′9″ Dutch keeper Andries Noppert.
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