Although Netherlands boss Louis van Gaal oversaw a largely tepid encounter against Senegal on the opening day, his side sprang into life during the dying minutes with two vital goals to win the contest. Van Gaal admitted that his team were both “shoddy and messy” in possession, although three important saves from debutant goalkeeper Andries Noppert ensured that they weren’t made to pay.
Plying his trade at Heerenveen, Noppert was unemployed just two years ago with an eye to joining the police, yet instead of catching criminals, he opted to catch shots for his country! With his nation never going out at the group stage in ten attempts, another decent display from the stopper may help produce the positive result expected for #8-ranked Oranje as they meet a side ranked 36 places below them by FIFA, Ecuador.
Gustavo Alfaro’s men etched their names into World Cup history last time out by being the first team to defeat the tournament’s host nation in the curtain raiser. Ecuador perhaps took inspiration from the manager’s “Winston Churchill” inspired pre-match speech where he stated “if you don’t change your opinion you’re not changing anything, so we had to change some things!”. And change they did, as Ecuador won 2-0 as part of their search to progress from a World Cup group stage for just the second time ever.
Yet a failure to win against 13 of the 24 European opponents that Ecuador have faced over the years, which includes two games against the Dutch (D1, L1), may mean Alfaro needs to be at his motivational best once again for this clash. He might point to his side’s ongoing 21st century national record of seven consecutive clean sheets ahead of this encounter to show Ecuador have a chance, although none of the sides La Tri faced during that run sat inside FIFA’s top ten, so they face a true test of their credentials here.
Players to watch: PSV and Netherlands star Cody Gakpo broke the deadlock against Senegal to score on his World Cup tournament debut, meaning that three of his last five goals for club & country were second-half match openers. Aiming to outdo him will be Ecuador and Fenerbahçe’s Enner Valencia, he scored twice last time out to make it five goals for him from just four tournament appearances!
Hot stat: Ecuador have taken the most corners in eight of their last nine matches.
World Cup trivia: By winning the World Cup for West Germany as a player in 1974 (vs (Netherlands) and as manager in 1990 (vs Argentina), Franz Beckenbauer became the first person to win the World Cup as both a national team captain and manager.
