Summerville makes ground down the right and finds Brobbey, who can’t quite keep his feet while holding off Tah. Xavi wants a free-kick, but there’s nothing doing.
Now of to Lisbon, where Vitinha slides Ronaldo into the box, left-hand side, and he looks low to the far pots, but the ball skips a couple of yards wide. I’d prefer not to keep going on about him, but he could actually be useful late in games, either hunting in the box or holding the ball up. The problem is the impact he has on the style a team can play when the game is steady.
Patrick Dorgu is playing right-wing for Denmark, and he forces Nyland into a scrambling save at his near post having cut inside to shoot.
Karetsas stabs a lovely chip from the edge of the box that beats the keeper … and clips the outside of the far post. The invention in that effort was lovely, no one other than him expected him to try and score in that way.
GOAL! Serbia 1-0 Greece (Zivkovic 4)
After two years away, retired from international football, 37-year-old Dusan Tadic runs in behind to lift a bouncing ball square into the middle, controlling a difficult skill beautifully, and Zivkovic arrives on to it to punish a first-time finish into the net. Celebrations are wild.
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Klopp flexes his newtons on the touchline, his Germany team starting like they’re one of his. He’s also wearing his Adidas cap, trefoil in Germany colours, as part of the “positive patriotism” he’s advocating for,
I’m looking forward to watching Greece. They’re without Giannis Konstantelias, who’s done his cruciate, but Karetsis is a serious player, and so is Kostoulas.
Though I’m not at all sure about the team, the Dutch tracky jackets are dead smart. Photo to follow, should there be one.
As we wait for kick-off, something that has caused me ire this week:
Where are chilli McCoy’s? T-Bone steak Roysters? Skips?
Out come our various teams…
Wales, meantime, are without Karl Darlow, Dylan Lawlor and Joe Rodon, Rubin Colwilll, Harry Wilson, Nathan Broadhead and Isaak Davies. I imagine they’ll defend deep, but Portugal have no pace in behind, so they could actually squeeze up and see what happens.
I’ve not a clue why Jorge Jesus hasn’t preferred Joao to Ruben Neves, or played both and left Ronaldo out, but here we are, making the least of Bruno Fernandes and Bernardo Silva, who’s also on the bench.
It’s unbelievable really – Ronaldo hasn’t be a net positive at international level in at least two tournaments, yet here we go again. He’s not the only thing wrong with Portugal – Roberto Martinez wasn’t exactly what you’d want – but with the players they have, they should be involved at the end of tournaments, and they’ve not even been close, nor have they been good prior to elimination. Rarely has so little been made of so much.
Robert Earnshaw is in the BBC studio wearing the same rig he was in on Sky this morning. The thing with red and blue is you leave yourself open to accusations of dressing like Mario.
I can’t say I love the look of Xavi’s Netherlands outfit. The front three might be a handful, but there’s a severe lack of quality in midfield and the centre of defence is short of pace. For a coach used to Barcelona quality and principles, this is a tough gig.
Germany’s midfield looks interesting; Felix Nmecha looks like he might be ready to make good on his promise and step up a class, while Jamal Musiala is special, and Joshua Kimmich adds experience and intelligence. I do, though, wonder if the team has enough goals in it, and if it’ll be able to play a version of Klopp’s high-energy football without lots of time on the training ground, and preparing for tournaments that come at the end of tiring seasons.
I am, though, really looking forward to seeing what Klopp does with Lennart Karl. The 18-year-old missed the World Cup with injury and, though he was originally selected for the squad, he was ultimately swapped with Karim Adeyemi and sent to the seconds for reasons of workload management. But he’ll be back soon.
It’s always interesting to see what happens when a new manager takes over a squad, because we get to see which players they rate. Thing is, neither Xavi nor Klopp have all that many options and, genius though he is, at Liverpool Klopp benefitted from perhaps the greatest run of transfer success in football history – and he had a pretty decent squad at Dortmund too. Still, there aren’t many better rabble rousers or man-managers, and imagine what it’ll mean to players told by him – and Xavi – that he believes in them.
Phew!
Teams!
Group A2
Netherlands (4-3-3): Verbruggen; Dumfries, Van Hecke, Van Dijk, Van de Ven; Gravenberch, Timber, Reijnders; Summerville, Brobbey, Gakpo. Subs: Roefs, Flekken, Geertruida, Hato, Ake, Lang, Frimpong, Til, Meerdink, Veerman, Koopmeiners, Van Bommel.
Germany (4-3-3): Ter Stegen; Treu, Schlotterbeck, Tah, Brown; Kimmich, Musiala, Nmecha; Adeyemi, Havertz, Schade. Subs: Dahmen, Nubel, Bisseck, Rosenfelder, Engelhardt, Amiri, Vagnoman, Stech, Fuhrich, Gnabry, Behrens, Ebnoutalib.
**
Serbia (4-4-2): Milinkovic-Savic V; Simic, Erakovic, Pavlovic, Kostic; Zivkovic, Milinkovic-Savic S, Maksimovic, Cvetkovic; Tadic, Jovic. Subs: Petrovic, Stanlovic, Sukacev, Dragojevic, Gudelj, Stankovic, Joveljic, Babic, Terzic, Kostiv, Samardzic, Lukic.
Greece (4-4-2): Tzolakis; Vagiannidis, Mavropanos, Retos, Tsimikas; Karetsas, Kourbelis, Zafeiris, Tzolis; Kostoulas, Pavlidis. Subs: Vlachodimos, Mandas, Koulierakis, Maouras, Ioannidis, Douvikas, Androutsos, Tetteh, Saliaks, Michailidis, Kyriakopoulos, Mouzakitis.
**
Group A4
Portugal (4-1-3-2): Costa; Cancelo, Veiga, Dias, Mendes; Neves; Fernandes, Vitinha, Neto; Ronaldo, Joao Felix. Subs: Rui Silva, Soares, Dalot, Araujo, Tavares, Palhinha, Ramos, Silva, Conceicao, J. Neves, Trincao, Leao.
Wales: (4-3-3): Ward; Williams, Cabango, Davies, Dasilva; James, Sheehan, Ampadu; Koumas, Johnson, Brooks. Subs: Cornell, King, Mepham, Burns, Cullen, Moore, Roberts, Norrington-Davies, Harris, Thomas, D. James, Colwill.
**
Norway (4-3-3): Nyland; Ryerson, Ajer, Heggem, Aursnes; Odegaard, Berge, Berg; Bobb, Haaland, Nusa. Subs: Tangvik, Selvik, Bjortuft, Ostigard, Moller Wolfe, Strand Larsen, Blomberg, Pedersen, Thorsvedt, Aasgaard, Schjelderup, Botheim.
Denmard (4-2-1-3): Jorgensen; Kristensen, Provstgaard, Andersen, Maehle; Hjulmand, Hojbjerg; Froholdt; Dorgu, Hojlund, Damsgasard. Subs: Jungdal, hermansen, Hogsberg, Nelsson, Isaksen, Jorgensen, Daghim, Bidstrup, Bak, Gaaei, Hogh, Gronbaek.
Righto, let’s have some teams…
Before we get into it, also going on:
Preamble
If you support a men’s football team, chances are you’d happily do without this. The season starts, then it stops, and for what?
Well, I’ll tell you what: Netherlands v Germany is one of the classic fixtures, bigger than almost anything the club game has to offer – and that’s before we factor in that not only does each have a new manager, but those managers are, respectively, Xavi and Jürgen Klopp. If that doesn’t make you want to stop what you’re doing and plunge your head directly into the YouTube quicksand by way of preparation, you have my deepest sympathies.
It’s also the case that the Nations League, though we don’t look at it in the way we look at the World Cup and European Championships – despite England’s inability to win it – has made a difference to these international breaks. The matches come with consequences, meaning they’re taken more seriously, meaning all the better for us.
This one, of course, is our centrepiece, but there’s more. We’ll also get to enjoy Jorge Jesus begin life as the latest Portugal manager to allow a potentially great team to be hamstrung by Ronaldo – Wales visit Lisbon – with Norway taking on Denmark and Serbia hosting Greece, whose golden generation is preparing to explode.
Kick-offs: 7.45pm BST
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