Koeman: “When I told Weghorst he wouldn’t start, he was very disappointed”

Leipzig (Germany) – Netherlands coach Ronald Koeman assured after the Netherlands’ 1-2 win over Poland on Sunday, with the goal-saver Wout Voghorst saying before the game that he was “very disappointed”. A duel that he had not intended to start began.

He then came on in the second half and scored the winning goal for the Netherlands in the 83rd minute, beating Poland 1-2 with a player who had been a substitute since the start. «It’s his quality. It adds something to our game. Memphis Depay takes the ball and Weghorst plays in a different position. When I told Watt he would not start against Poland, he was very disappointed. But he did not dwell on that disappointment. Of course he could have started, too, « he declared at a press conference.

“It’s great that Watt got the win, it’s very important for the team. I could also choose to have Memphis Depay play as the ’10’ behind Watt, but I didn’t dare to do it when the score was 1-1,” said Koeman, who introduced Weghorst and Jeremy Frimpong for Depay and Cody Gakpo in the final bar.

The Dutch coach was pleased with his team’s first half, saying that an hour had been played very well, but he regretted not settling the score earlier: “We should have won, 3-1 or 4-1. We had to be more effective. We created so many chances, which is good. In the last two training matches we did the same. Until then we had created only eight,” he said.

He also praised Cody Gakpo, scorer of the Netherlands’ first goal: “Maybe we should have looked for him more. I thought he played well. But I substituted him anyway. I wanted my team to have more pace with Donyell Malen and Jeremie Frimpong. “It’s good to have these options,” he explained.

Finally, he said about Nathan Ake, whom he replaced at the end due to illness: “He plays for perhaps the best team in the world. He is also very important for us. But he had some small problems recently. We were careful with him, but fortunately Nathan was not injured. With Micky van der Ven, we also bring a lot of strength to the team,” he concluded. Efei