Valentijn Driessen expects at least a place in the semi-finals for the Dutch national team at the European Championship. Frank de Boer’s team is linked to the Czech Republic in the eighth final and will play against Denmark or Wales in a possible quarter-final. Driessen speaks of ‘red carpet work’ for the the Dutch on the way to Wembley: he does not foresee any serious problems in the eighth finals and the quarterfinals. Still, Driessen would prefer a heavier program, he says in the program Kick-Off the Dutch from The Telegraph.
Presenter Pim Sedee names Tomás Soucek, Vladimír Darida and Patrik Schick as the most important players in the Czech Republic. “They play at West Ham United. Hertha BSC and Bayer Leverkusen. The Dutch national team: Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Liverpool, Juventus, Ajax…”, Driessen counters. “Come on guys. If this goes wrong, you have to put the Dutch national team in the bunker for about ten weeks. Frank de Boer will also have to flee if he doesn’t make the semi-finals now.” In the broadcast, a comparison is made with Belgium, which takes on Portugal and can then also hit countries such as Italy, France or Spain on their way to the final.
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“Isn’t that what you want as a country? You don’t want to end up in a series like the Netherlands? You want to play heroic matches along the way,” says the newspaper’s football chief. “Who will remember in ten years’ time how the Netherlands reached the semi-finals? Nobody. Then everyone says: yes, that was a piece of cake. The numbers thirty to fifty in the world ranking (Czech Republic is fortieth, Wales seventeenth and Denmark tenth, ed.). It does not appeal to the imagination at all. Nobody will talk about the group stage and about the match against the Czech Republic. It is a saltless tournament.”
Both in the group stage and in the knockout phase, the the Dutch is lucky in terms of opposition. “I was at the draw (in November 2019, ed.) and then we already said to Ronald Koeman: ‘You have a golden cock,’ says Driessen. “That golden cock is now a little less, because I think Koeman would have loved to have been national coach of the Dutch national team. He has of course chosen Barcelona, but he has only experienced misery there. The Netherlands is now on its way to the semi-finals and maybe even the final. Who would have ever thought that? It’s not the game or the system, but the draw.”
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