The Dutch plan worked against the Americans – Sport – Kommersant

The Netherlands team became the first quarter-finalist of the World Cup in Qatar. In the 1/8 finals, the Dutch defeated – 3:1 – the Americans, who only at the end of the meeting made them think that they knew how to resist the opponent who was very clearly following the tactical plan. However, the intrigue did not last long.

The match that opened the cup stage of the Qatari World Cup immediately made those who managed to fall in love with the Netherlands national team during the group stage believe that this time it was definitely ready for great achievements, a little doubt their feelings. It has long been noticed that the American Christian Pulisic is endowed with the properties of a ghost – in the sense that he literally materializes out of nowhere in free areas of the field. Now he, unnoticed by anyone, after a successful American rebound, which continued the seemingly already frustrated attack, appeared in the empty Dutch penalty area. Apart from goalkeeper Andris Noppert, there was no one in front of Pulisic. Knoppert saved the Dutch from near-imminent disaster by hitting the ball with his long leg.

Such dispersal set up the fact that the US team was ready to give battle to an opponent who was quoted much higher. But soon she was already inferior in the account.

It was a piece of ideal Dutch football. The kind of football that was reminiscent of all the great teams that have ever represented the Netherlands at the World Cup, such as the great team with Johan Cruyff from 1974.

And he was also reminiscent of the football that, wherever he worked, the Dutch coach Louis van Gaal tried to put on.

Before building a goal, his players made exactly two dozen passes!

Ninety percent of them were needed to break the American pressure, which seemed in vain to be the densest – the mouse will not slip through. Two – in order to break it, to bring through Cody Gakpo and Denzel Dumfries, who joined on his right flank, the ball to Memphis Depay, who was recently completely dismantled after an injury, but adding and adding during the championship. American defensive midfielder Tyler Adams, previously impeccable, overslept his breakthrough, and Friedman shot goalkeeper Matt Turner.

After that half an hour in the match, there were few events worthy of hitting the highlights. Well, except that another subtle pass from Gakpo to Daily Blind could end up there. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth watching closely. Of course, it was worth it – at least in order to understand what is the difference between just a good team and a very good team. In every decision, in every action of a very good – Dutch – one could read too clear, too well thought out plan. We will not interfere with the American defenders to bring the ball to the line dividing the field in half. We are not going to deprive our opponents of the illusion at all: let them think that we can be crushed. But we will line up so that after the ball reaches the center line, they have no options. Let them take risks, let them make losses, let them slowly lose their temper because of their own torment.

While the Dutch team was demonstrating the flawless implementation of their strategy, Greg Berkhalter, the head coach of the US national team, kept running out of the technical area and actively gesticulating with his hands, as if he represented his players as giant chess pieces that for some reason were moving in the wrong place, and everything urgently needed to be fixed, turning off automatic mode. But it didn’t work out.

Closer to the break, the Americans, however, got close to the Dutch penalty area, one might say, overlaid it. But this, too, seems to have been part of a wonderful Dutch plan, a clever trap. Having lured the US team, before going to rest, they bit it again until it bled. Now – after an out and another excellent pass from Dumfries, the addressee of which was Blind, who did not fake.

Berhalter, before the second half, of course, worked to still slightly correct, strictly speaking, the hopeless game of his team. And there was hope in her. The episode in which, after a set piece, the ball, after ricochets, passed Noppert and had to be stopped at the “ribbon” by the Dutch defenders, looked a little crazy, but you can’t say the same about the next one. The Americans for the first time cut open the Dutch defense with calculated maneuvers, and Weston McKenny, who was laid out by the substitute Giovanni Reina, could well hit the goal from the penalty line, but fired above the crossbar. And from the feeling that the pieces were moving, they began to choose the right cells, there was nowhere to go. And a quarter-hour segment of Dutch activity with the feat of Turner, who held out against Depay, although he finished off with his head from half a dozen meters, did not kill him. Something positive happened to the US team. Still a drop of fart.

And luck, in the end, rewarded her for diligence. Entering the game no worse than Reina Hadji Wright turned out to be a hit in the bull’s-eye for Berhalter. He constantly infiltrated the Dutch rear, kept them in such tension, which until now it was impossible to imagine. Meanwhile, Depay blundered, unsuccessfully throwing the ball back, and a second American attacking wave rolled up to the Dutch penalty area. Pulisic crossed from the right, probably deciding himself that the cross had failed: Wright was covered by Virgil van Dijk, who has no equal in the world among central defenders. But then something almost fantastic happened. Already, in fact, having run past the ball, Wright somehow hooked it with his foot and sent it along an unthinkable trajectory into the far corner. Both van Dijk and Noppert looked dumbfounded.

This goal screamed that the ending would be stormy and nervous. But it did not work out with her, because five minutes after the trick of Haji Wright, who revived the intrigue, the US team killed her herself. She should have been extremely careful, and she, after staring at Daley Blind and the Dutch players in the center of the penalty area, missed Dumfries, who had sneaked into her from her edge, who did not forgive her rivals.

In the quarter-finals, the Netherlands team will meet the winner of the match between the Argentines and the Australians, which took place late tonight.

Alexey Dospekhov