Northern Ireland faces Netherlands

Northern Ireland faces Netherlands in a very interesting European qualifier at the Windsor Park in Belfast on Saturday.

For Netherlands the situation in this group is more than clear – if they win their two remaining matches until the end, they will beat Germany for the first place and they will win the group. After this visit to Belfast, which is their harder game of the two, Ronald Koeman’s boys will have a pretty easy game at home against the weakest team in the group Estonia.

If we forget for a second about the home loss against Germany, which was avenged later, Netherlands are pretty dominant in this group so far with five wins from six games played. The manager Ronald Koeman is doing a pretty good job since being appointed at the job. Lately he was linked with a move to Barcelona in the summer, but you can be sure he’d want to lead the team at the Euro 2020 first.

In their last game in the group Netherlands had a visit to Belarus in Minsk, which they won with a winning brace from their influental midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum. Some might say that it was not Netherlands’ best game this year, but they did what was the most important – they won.

But now Oranje will have a really tough trip to Belfast to face Northern Ireland. The Brits are enjoying a great revival of their national team in the recent years. Right now the Irish side third in the group with 12 points and a record of four wins and two losses.

In the previous round Northern Ireland faced Netherlands in Rotterdam, but got beaten with 1-3. Josh Magennis opened the score for the visitors in the 75th minute, which probably gave them some hopes of even winning the match. Well, it didn’t happen, because Oranje scored three goals in the last 10 minutes of the clash.

If you think this is going to be an easy one for Netherlands, we advice you to think again. It won’t be. It’s pretty hard to play in Belfast, because Northern Ireland are a capable team. But surely Oranje are good enough to win this.