Holland 3 Finland 1 (World Cup 2006 UEFA Qualification Group 1)

Brisk opening goes nowhere as Dutch seize midfield and show class

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By William Moore for IntEd
     
      A few days ago in these pages there was a remark about Finns playing out of their skins for long periods and yet losing important matches.
      This time the period was appreciably shorter: for the first twenty minutes of this game, the visitors in Amsterdam controlled the proceedings, to the point where the home crowd whistled and booed their own, and chants of "Suomi, Suomi" from the thousand or so travelling fans were quite audible.
      Then the wheels fell off.
      Holland gratefully pushed forward in numbers, scored a good equaliser, got a scrambled second goal a couple of minutes later, were gifted a decisive third soon after the restart, and went on to win the match on cruise control.
      No hard-luck story here. In the end, no real contest, either.
     
But for twenty enjoyable minutes, during which time Finland had gone 1-0 up through a spectacular diving header from Teemu Tainio, it was very hard to see why FIFA places around 40 teams between the Dutch and the Finns in the international rankings.
      Even without Jari Litmanen, whose thigh injury had not responded to treatment, the Finnish midfield worked adequately in both directions, forward and back.
      Shefki Kuqi and Alexei Eremenko Jr.  caused a nuisance to the Dutch back line (in particular to their captain Edgar Davids, who was incomprehensibly stuck at left-back), there was fluid communication between the likes of Aki Riihilahti, Joonas Kolkka, and Teemu Tainio, and the defence under captain Sami Hyypiä coped with Rafael van der Vaart and Ruud van Nistelrooij (who was back after suspension) as if they were Andorran part-timers rather than fêted stars of the Champions League stage.
     
After only four minutes, Eremenko was freed down the right and got in a decent cross to Kuqi’s head, but the ball bobbled past Edwin van der Sar’s  near post. Sami Hyypiä made an uncharacteristic lapse shortly after this, and he nearly let in van Nistelrooij, but the striker could not make contact with a good ball in from van der Vaart.
      And then suddenly, Finland were ahead, and deservedly so.
      It was Route One stuff. A huge ball from Antti Niemi in the Finnish goal was nodded smartly on by Kuqi to an advancing Joonas Kolkka at the edge of the box. Kolkka looked up and saw that van der Sar was not at home, and he lobbed him. The shot cannoned annoyingly off the crossbar, but no further than Teemu Tainio, who launched himself horizontally and the ball fairly screamed into the net off his head.
     
The Finns even had the audacity to begin to exert real pressure at this point, and that is when the booing started. The Dutch fans were not best pleased with the previous weekend’s draw against Macedonia, and things were looking a good deal worse for Marco van Basten’s charges right about now. His new recruits - the Dutch team has had to be rebuilt after several veterans announced their retirement at Euro 2004 - were being given the runaround.
      But class will out in the end. The Dutch regrouped and the Finns retreated, when perhaps they should have gone flat-out for a second goal.
      Now, above all, they would have needed a cool head like Litmanen to hold the ball up, marshal the players, and ensure that they kept hold of possession for a few minutes, rather than exposing the defence to a series of Dutch probes that became increasingly insistent.
     
In any event, the midfield was surrendered again, and gradually the balance of pressure shifted to the wrong end of the field.
      The impressive Wesley Sneijder had two or three chances before he scored, but he either found the side-netting or the imposing presence of Antti Niemi, who had set out his stall to prove he is really as good as the English Premiership pundits say he is.
      Niemi pulled off a sequence of big saves, but could do nothing about it when Sneijder got on the end of a flighted overhead pass from Phillip Cocu and shrugged off Aki Riihilahti’s challenge. Sneijder’s shot was hard and high and unstoppable.
     
Only a couple of minutes later, Ruud van Nistelrooij proved that he can be "subdued" or even "absent" for longish periods of a game, but will still get on the scoresheet with monotonous regularity.
      Dirk Kuijt  and Romeo Castelen  worked well together before Castelen clattered the top of the right-hand upright with a shot that had Niemi beaten, and van Nistelrooij was the fastest to react to the rebound: 2-1 and suddenly a very different script was unfolding.
      The Dutch could even have had a third before the break, had it not been for Niemi again, rushing out to thwart Kuijt after a mix-up at the back. .
     
The second half  was a bit of an improvement for the Finns, at least in the opening exchanges.
      They seemed to have settled their nerves after the two late goals, but there were ominous signs, too: Kuqi appeared increasingly alone up front, his touch was a fraction too heavy, and the gifted but inexperienced Eremenko Jr. was beginning to look more interested in continuing his own personal World Cup scoring record than in setting up chances for others.
      Aki Riihilahti went off with a knock on the hour, and was replaced by Jonathan Johansson.
      Johansson had barely had time to get a touch before a ghastly mistake by Petri Pasanen in the left-back position let in Castelen. His low cross to van Nistelrooij was meat and drink to the Manchester United player, and he drove the ball low into the far corner.
     
If the Finnish goal had been followed by a relatively swift decline in their enthusiasm for taking the game to Holland, this third Dutch strike had much the same effect on the hosts. They seemed happy enough to play out the remaining 25 minutes or so without improving their goal average.
      Had Eremenko had not been quite so spendthrift, Finland could even have pulled one back as they moved forward on the break and Kolkka - who was definitely one of the bright spots of the evening - was left unguarded on the edge of the box.
      Kolkka and Johansson occasionally linked well together - an encouraging sign that Finland’s options at the front could be expanded.
      The absence of a killer forward like Mikael Forssell  (out for several months with knee ligament woes) was nevertheless very apparent. In matches like this, the success rate in front of goal has to be very high indeed.
     
Four Finnish players picked up yellow cards as they tired, with Mika Väyrynen’s meaning he will be absent for the next match.
      Eremenko went off (goalless for once) with 20 minutes to go, to be replaced by Janne Saarinen. The youngster did not look too happy about it, but by this stage his contribution was minimal.
      The last quarter of an hour or so was predictable stuff: tactical substitutions, with van Basten able to bring on an international star like Roy Makaay for a brief trot around the park, a measure of apparent control by the Finns, and the powerful sensation that the Dutch could easily have moved up another gear or two if anything had gone wrong. They had overcome their early jitters and knew they were the better team on the night.
     
The result will naturally be a slight disappointment: however strong the Dutch are as a footballing nation, there had been hopes that the Finns could spring a surprise and snatch a point from this game, thereby allowing them to nurture dreams of qualification over the long dark winter.
      It still leaves Finland in second spot in the table, with Romania (who did not play) going above them on goal difference. Finland have nine points from their three wins against Andorra and Armenia (twice). The Dutch have seven, but have only played three matches.
      The Czech Republic put three goals past Armenia in Yerevan to take themselves to six points from three appearances, and Andorra produced the upset of the night in Group One, beating Macedonia at home by the only goal of the game. Considering that Macedonia had held Holland to a 2-2 draw only a few days earlier, and considering that Andorra’s previous 30 matches in major competitions had all ended in defeat, this was one for the record-books.
     
The group now continues without Finland for the next round of matches, played in mid-November.
      Macedonia host the Czechs, Romania travel to Armenia, and Andorra will attempt to do to Holland what they just did to Macedonia.
      Finland will next be in action in March 2005, with a difficult visit to Prague. It is to be hoped Forssell can be brought back to fitness by then, and it would also be nice to see Jari Litmanen with a bigger role than the giving of numerous press interviews in fluent Dutch.
      When one remembers his popularity in The Netherlands after his glittering career with Ajax Amsterdam, it must have been particularly galling for the midfielder to sit this one out in the stands.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Winning ugly: Finland 3 Armenia 1 (World Cup UEFA Qualification Group 1)

Links:
  UEFA Match Report

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