Johan Derksen believes it is quite possible that the Dutch national team will not make it through the group stage of the World Cup. The television personality made this claim on Wednesday evening on *Vandaag Inside*.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill the Netherlands become world champions?\u201d presenter Wilfred Genee brought up the topic during the broadcast. \u201cWhat do you think, lads?\u201d Rutger Castricum was the first to reply, in a cynical tone.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I think so, don\u2019t you? If you\u2019ve seen them play, you\u2019d think so. It was Ecuador,\u201d he says, referring to the Oranje\u2019s 1-1 draw in Tuesday evening\u2019s friendly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Derksen then speaks up. \u201cI don\u2019t think the Dutch team will survive the group stage,\u201d predicts De Snor. The Dutch national team will face Japan, Sweden and Tunisia in the final tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a quick look back at it yesterday and I thought it was all so mediocre. Then when you see: Tunisia, Japan and Sweden… Japan and Sweden are in top form, teams with a lot of strength and stamina,\u201d says Derksen.<\/p>\n
\u201cTunisia also has a lot of players playing abroad these days, so it\u2019s no longer a footballing backwater,\u201d he continues. That is why his conclusion is that the Dutch team faces a tough challenge in the group stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll have to see if this bunch of run-of-the-mill footballers survive the group stage. They have poor goalkeepers,\u201d says Derksen, analysing Ronald Koeman\u2019s squad. \u201cI think Bart Verbruggen is a poor goalkeeper, and yesterday\u2019s (Mark Flekken, ed.) is no good either. Robin Roefs is the best, but he was injured.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have three or four strikers, but not a single one who\u2019s a proper top-class striker. That\u2019s a problem, you know! All those players are bit-part players abroad; they\u2019re not stars. It\u2019s no coincidence that Micky van de Ven\u2019s team (Tottenham Hotspur, ed.) are bottom of the table (17th, ed.) in England,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
The top two teams in each group qualify automatically for the knockout stage, as do the eight best third-placed teams from the World Cup groups. \u201cIt\u2019s fairly easy to go through,\u201d admits Derksen. \u201cBut it\u2019s not a foregone conclusion that we will.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johan Derksen believes it is quite possible that the Dutch national team will not make it through the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,12512,105,6866],"class_list":["post-370112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-netherlands","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}