All about Wout

Poland 1 - 2 Netherlands

I went into this game, fully cognisant that normally the only tougher watch in tournament football than Poland, is Poland without Lewandowski.

Luckily they were up against the Dutch, a team I've been fond of watching ever since Gullit and Van Basten rocked my world way back when. I have particular interest in the current team as Dumfries, Maatsen and Frimpong have all been loosely linked to Villa transfers, so a good chance to see them in action.

Poland took the lead, as was inevitable after my first paragraph (written before k.o.) and Gakpo grabbed a deserved equaliser after the Netherlands responded well. Following this, the game seemed to fall into a pattern of the Dutch attacking, one of Simons or Depay wazzing it wide, then the BBC cutting to a bloke wearing an orange jumpsuit. 

This holding pattern continued for the majority of the match, until Koeman, inspired I think by the Hungarian's use of of Martin Ádám the other day, made things simpler, bringing on big man Wout Weghorst for the final stages. Bosh, goal, no fannying about, job done. 2-1.

And so onto Slovenia (how annoying it is for the wall chart filler that there's two teams in the tourney that should be abbreviated to SLO) Vs Denmark, a matchup worth watching to see what, if anything, England should fear.