Drenthe brings U21 victory

Reigning champs in Europe, the Dutch U21 team, won the 1st qualification duel with 0-1 away against Madedonia. In the 25th minute, it was new Real Madrid signing Royston Drenthe who scored the winning goal.

The circumstances in Madedonia were tough. When the match was on it was 37 degrees! Apart from that, the planned training session was canceled because the group arrived in Macedonia with a nine hour delay.

The U21 team had trouble settling in the match. Dominating the play was hard and Oranje U21 didn’t create a lot of chances.

After the break, Oranje was still the better team, but Macedonia came back strong and Vermeer had to stop them from scoring in the dying minutes of the game.

“We are definitely not at the level we had some months back,” said a cranky De Haan. “We walked too long with the ball and our pace was too low. And because of that, we needed to play fight football instead of positioning play.”

De Haan was happy with the result though, and plays Norway on September 7. The other nations in the Dutch group are Estonia and Switzerland.