The Netherlands punished American defensive lapses and were clinical in front of goal to knock a naive USA team out of the 2022 World Cup.
Football is a simple game, and the first match of the knockout stages of the World Cup came down to two of the games immutable laws; you need a goalscorer to win games, and you can’t afford to fall asleep against good teams. The USA are out of the World Cup, eliminated by a Dutch team that had too much experience, too much swagger and too much nous for them. The youngest squad in the tournament had already achieved their minimum target for it by getting through the group stages with England, but against the Netherlands they came up against a team who had just a little too much of everything for them.
The Dutch played the first ten minutes like a jack-in-the-box. They sat back patiently and absorbed some early American pressure which included a very early chance for Christian Pulisic which was blocked by Andries Noppert’s legs. And after having waited for the right moment, when it came they pounced, moving the ball quickly, fluidly and effortlessly through the middle, a beautiful sweeping move. The USA had committed too many players forward, and with the ball having been played out to the right, a first touch inside from Denzel Dumfries found Memphis Depay for a tidy finish and an early Dutch lead.
It had already been evident that there were gaps at the back for the USA when the Netherlands broke. The pace of the American central defence had been questioned before the game and the Netherlands were finding themselves in gratifying amounts of space when they did get forward. But conceding an early goal didn’t seem to quench American energy levels, even though they couldn’t find an immediate reply to the early Dutch goal.
Much as they had been for much of their previous three games, the USA were all heat and no light, possibly an inevitable side-effect of having a team picked from the small squad in the tournament. They controlled possession in the middle of the pitch effectively, but as they approached the Netherlands penalty area they seemed to slow, as though they were running into patches of treacle. But time and again there was no final ball, just a lot of running down blind alleys which ended in losing the ball, all accompanied by whistles and a growing hint of jeering from the crowd.
In the remaining 38 minutes of the first half following the goal the USA could only manage one shot on target, a shot…
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