• Tijjani Reijnders scored a first-half hat-trick, all three from inside the six-yard box, as the Netherlands led 5-0 at half-time in Amsterdam
• Jurriën Timber scored twice from left-back, his first goals for the Netherlands, with Crysencio Summerville and Donyell Malen also on the scoresheet
• Greece, who held Germany 0-0 last month and arrived unbeaten, managed one shot on target, while the Dutch had 13
• The Netherlands go top on 11 points, three clear of Germany and Greece, ahead of Monday’s trip to Berlin

It was billed as first against first at the Johan Cruijff Arena, the Netherlands and Greece both unbeaten and level on 8 points at the top of Group 2, with Greece arriving on the back of a 0-0 draw with Germany in which they faced 21 shots and had only 5 of their own, and the reverse fixture in Thessaloniki having finished 2-2. Xavi was without Virgil van Dijk and Ryan Gravenberch, so Donyell Malen led the line as the new man at centre-forward, but none of the absences mattered, because the Netherlands were five goals up by half-time and Greece’s unbeaten run was over long before the end.

Five Before the Break

Xavi’s impact since taking charge of the Netherlands has been a philosophy of possession and control, built on passing and movement in every vertical lane of the pitch, sometimes interchanging, sometimes rotating, and tonight every Dutch player was pulling the strings. It took six minutes to show. Konstantinos Mavropanos played a weak pass out from the back, Cody Gakpo intercepted it and found Crysencio Summerville, who finished low across goal for 1-0.

Then came Tijjani Reijnders. Bursting from midfield into the box again and again, he scored on 12, 18 and 33 minutes, all three finished from inside the six-yard box and two of them from tight angles, an explosive first-half hat-trick that made him the first Netherlands player to score three before half-time since Marco van Basten against Malta in 1990, according to NOS.

Greece thought they had a way back at 3-0. Micky van de Ven’s mix-up with Bart Verbruggen let in Fotis Ioannidis, who scored on 24 minutes, but VAR ruled it out straight away for handball as he brought the ball down. From then on, the Dutch went on to score another two before the break. Jurriën Timber made it 5-0 on 40 minutes, inverting from wide into the final third the way he often does, only on the left tonight, rather than the right, where we usually see him for Arsenal. It was only the fourth time the Netherlands had scored five goals before half-time, according to NOS, and the first since they beat Estonia in 2001.

Greece’s Reset Lasts Ten Minutes

Off the ball, both sides had the same idea on goal kicks, a 4-4-2 high block, pressing man-to-man, with the front two using their cover shadows to make central progression as difficult as possible, staying touch-tight to the midfielders, funnelling the ball into wide areas and forcing back passes to press even higher.

Greece did come out positively after the break, committing bodies forward to attack the Dutch third as if a reset button had been pressed at half-time and the pain of the first was a distant memory, but it came back quickly. On 59 minutes, Denzel Dumfries played a low ball across, Konstantinos Tzolakis got a hand to it but couldn’t stop it rolling to the back post, and Timber arrived unmarked to make it 6-0, his second goal of the night and his first two for the National Team.

The problem Greece could neither handle nor fix was that every Dutch player who joined the attack got early separation from his marker and kept it, free to receive the ball between the midfield and defensive lines, get his head up and pick a pass, which made progression instinctive and let the Netherlands get into the final third again and again and again. Two minutes after Timber’s second, Dumfries powered into the box past three Greek challenges and Malen, free as a bird, made it 7-0 with his first goal for the Netherlands this year.

Xavi took off Frenkie de Jong at half-time for Teun Koopmeiners, then Gakpo, Reijnders, Timber and Summerville, bringing on Ruben van Bommel, Gjivai Zechiël, Ian Maatsen and Noa Lang, while Ivan Jovanović changed both strikers on 65 minutes, Tasos Bakasetas and Anastasios Douvikas replacing Vangelis Pavlidis and Ioannidis, but nothing changed the pattern. The Netherlands finished with 13 shots on target to Greece’s one and an expected goals figure of 4.39 to 0.44, according to 365Scores, with possession split almost evenly at 53% to 47%.

What the Manager’s Said

Xavi told NOS he was not surprised. “I wasn’t surprised, because it was already going very well in training,” he said, adding that the key was how his side “attacked the spaces”. He admitted the second half was a little less sharp, saying, “Everyone understood each other in the first half. The second was a bit less so.” On De Jong’s half-time withdrawal, he explained, “Frenkie told me before the match that he had some back trouble,” but said he expects him to be available against Germany, and he was quick to keep expectations in check: “It will generally be difficult to maintain this level, and certainly against Germany.”

Ivan Jovanović did not hide from it. “We knew the opponent is a good team and that it would be a difficult game,” he told Alpha TV. “However, we were not well prepared. The 3-0 at that moment was a small shock, from which we could not recover during the match.” He added, “There is very great disappointment. We disappointed a lot of people, both those who were here and those watching us,” and told Novasports, “This game hurt us, and it will continue to hurt us for a long time.”

Verdict on Netherlands

This was the Netherlands at their best under Xavi so far, with movement in every lane, a midfielder arriving in the six-yard box three times in 21 minutes and a left-back who scored twice, and Greece, who had frustrated Germany with a low block a month ago, were pulled apart by the separation the Dutch runners found every time they went forward. Germany won 3-1 in Serbia, so the Netherlands go to Berlin on Monday on 11 points, three clear of Germany and Greece, with the top two going through to the quarter-finals in March. Can Xavi’s side produce anything close to this against Klopp’s Germany, or was tonight as good as it gets?

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