Gavin Cooney reports from Leipzig
FRANCE AGAINST THE Netherlands stood out in the group stage fixture list like an exclamation mark but proved more like a stray comma: a messy piece of punctuation interrupting the rich flow of this European Championship.
Both sides won their opening group game and could virtually ensure progress with a draw, and with Kylian Mbappe an unused substitute following his broken nose, that draw arrived goalless and cooked by dreary and silent collusion.
And when a goal arrived almost by accident, the linesman and VAR ruled it out anyway for a lesser-spotted theoretical offside. Denzel Dumfries was standing offside as Xavi Simons rifled a rebound into the net, and while he didn’t touch the ball, he might have stopped the French goalkeeper from diving, given where he was standing.
With that ruled out, both sides re-assumed their foetal positions and took their draw. Dutch manager Ronald Koeman even whipped off his would-be goalscorer immediately after the VAR call.
Generally, the game was a gaudy, high-calibre insult to the rest of us; football’s version of Zak Snyder’s Justice League.
But it was foretold by the French teamsheet.
Having smashed his nose against Austria on Monday, Kylian Mbappe wore a Zorro-style face-mask and started on the bench. This being France, Deschamps was tripping over alternative options. Would he play the exciting young PSG winger Bradley Barcola? Or add some midfield finesse with Warren Zaire-Emery? Or play Olivier Giroud alongside Marcus Thuram in a kind of Twin Peaks attack?
The masked and uninvolved Kylian Mbappe. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo
Er, no. We must remember that Deschamps carries himself with all the outlaw abandon of Ned Flanders. Therefore, defensive midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni came in to play alongside defensive midfielder N’Golo Kante and defensive-midfielder-cum-South-William-Street-barista, Adrien Rabiot.
Didier Deschamps: Le Roi Du Buzzkill.
Koeman, meanwhile, had to weigh up how best to deal with a side to whom they had lost home and away in qualifying. Having taken over from Louis Van Gaal after the World Cup in Qatar, Ronald Koeman preached the Dutch tradition of returning to a 4-3-3. He then took it to Paris and was 3-0 down after 20 minutes. Reverting to Van Gaal’s back three led to a much closer-fought 2-1 loss in the home game.
Tonight he picked two right wing-backs but didn’t have anyone in the role. Instead it was a back four with Denzel Dumfries at right-back and Bayer Leverkusen’s Jeremie Frimpong on the right of the attack. The plan was to attack left-back Theo Hernandez and it was showcased after less than a minute. The supersonic Frimpong ran onto a delightful swished pass from Memphis Depay, forcing Mike Maignan into an agile save.
The Dutch lost any hope of being able to control a game like this with Frenkie De Jong’s pre-tournament injury and so they set up to play on the counter. Alas they saw several flourishing opportunities wither at the feet of Cody Gakpo and Memphis, guilty too often of taking the wrong option.
Sans Kylian, this was an opportunity for Antoine Griezmann to step back into the warmth of the limelight that he has had to so painfully vacate. Griezmann was upset at being snubbed for the captaincy in favour of Mbappe but on the pitch has sacrificed himself for the greater good by reinventing himself as a tireless, gap-plugging domestique.
Tonight he played as a number 10, given a broadly free role to roam and dictate play. Sadly for Griezmann, he fluffed his lines when the spotlight shone for his soliloquy. France managed to poke the ball through a tiny gap left by Virgil van Dijk for Rabiot who, instead of shooting, decided to square the ball for Griezmann to tap into the net.
That’s what Griezmann would have done had he connected with the ball. Instead he swiped at it and a glorious chance had retreated backstage. He connected sweetly with a Kante pass a minute but saw it slam the wrong side of the post.
France were otherwise stodgy and dreary, struggling to play through the disciplined Dutch set-up. To that end they weren’t helped by Rabiot’s constant drifting in from the left-wing and without meaning to be too harsh on France, it left their left hand-side looking as shrunken and enfeebled as…England’s.
At half-time it was difficult to know which of Mbappe or Wout Weghorst the game most needed.
Neither striker nor anyone else was introduced at the break, and the game threatened to trundle its way to a draw with which both managers would be happy in this too-forgiving qualifying format.
France, though, mercifully albeit briefly upped the ante in the early stages of the second-half. Tchouameni headed just over from Dembele’s cross, while Griezmann miscued in the box yet again as a clumsy first-touch allowed Bart Verbruggen time to splay himself and divert Griezmann’s second contact behind for a corner.
But from this inauspicious period the Dutch took the lead. Briefly. Memphis managed to wriggle around his marker in the box and stab a goalbound shot that Maignan saved well, but the rebound fell to Xavi Simons who struck the ball sweetly in the bottom corner. The sea of Oranje behind the goal erupted and the press box was drenched in a cascade of beer.
Nobody tossing their booze, however, saw the linesman’s flag wafting in the air. A long, long VAR check eventually verified his decision. The referee was Anthony Taylor and the VAR his Premier League colleague Stuart Atwell, and with this decision England can be said to have finally have made its mark on Euro 2024.
It was a classic bit of Premier League officiating: a pernickety decision, exhaustively reached.
Dumfries was standing in an offside position when Simons took his shot and though he did not touch the ball, he was deemed to be interfering with Maignan. He didn’t appear to touch Maignan either, but he theoretically could have prevented him from diving to reach the ball. That may be true, but what also prevented Maignan from diving were his two flat feet and the pace and precision of Simons’ shot. Had the linesman not flagged, it’s hard to imagine the VAR intruding to disallow the goal.
The Dutch fans vented their fury, though news of the overturn did not appear to reach Ronaldo Koeman, who made a triple sub to lock the game down, taking off Frimpong and even Simons. But maybe he was happy to protect his 0-0.
Weghorst and Olivier Giroud were introduced late on but there were no more chances and, at times, literally nothing happened. As the game slid into stoppage time, the French fans jeered as Verbruggen stood with the ball at his feet, with none of the 22 players on the pitch moving. France did not want to press, the Dutch did not want to try and pass their way anywhere interesting.
Both sides will progress. They should add an apology to the tournament.
France: Mike Maignan; Jules Kounde, Dayot Upamecano, William Saliba, Theo Hernandez; N’Golo Kante, Aurelien Tchouameni, Adrien Rabiot; Ousmane Dembele (Kingsley Coman, 75′), Marcus Thuram (Olivier Giroud, 75′), Antoine Griezmann (captain)
Netherlands: Bart Verbruggen; Denzel Dumfries, Stefan De Vrij, Virgil Van Dijk (captain), Nathan Ake; Jerdy Schouten (Joey Veerman, 73′), Tijani Reijnders, Xavi Simons (Georginio Wijnaldum, 73′); Jeremie Frimpong (Lutsharel Geertruida, 73′), Memphis Depay (Wout Weghorst, 77′), Cody Gakpo
Referee: Anthony Taylor
