Five-star Dutch statement poses threat to Argentina

Ronald Koeman had seen enough of the half-empty version of his side. Six days after stumbling through a 2-2 draw with Japan that flattered them only in the scoreline, the Netherlands produced the kind of evening that reminds you why this golden-tinged generation still talks about winning the whole thing — and, by the final whistle, why Argentina is the name suddenly on everyone’s lips in Amsterdam again.
Brian Brobbey and Cody Gakpo both struck twice, Crysencio Summerville added late gloss, and a Sweden side that had blitzed Tunisia 5-1 in their own opener were taken apart 5-1 at NRG Stadium. It wasn’t just the scoreline. It was the manner — a Dutch team that had looked short of ideas against Japan suddenly playing with verve, width and an edge of menace that had been missing.
Brobbey’s opener set the tone, a poacher’s finish that owed everything to the box presence Koeman has been crying out for. Gakpo, increasingly the heartbeat of this side rather than a wide option, doubled up either side of half-time, drifting inside off the left with the conviction of a player who has 
stopped asking permission. Summerville’s strike was a coda rather than a turning point, but it spoke to the same theme: a Dutch front line finally hunting as a pack.
Defensively, this remains a side built on old certainties — Virgil van Dijk marshaling a back line that had looked uncharacteristically loose against Japan, Denzel Dumfries a battering ram down the right. Usually a nation known for its attacking talent, this version of the Netherlands is packed with stars in defence, and on this evidence, when the attack clicks too, there is real substance here. The win hands Koeman’s side control of their own fate going into the final group match against Tunisia, with Japan still alive and Group F as tight as any at the tournament.

But the bigger conversation a result like this invites is the one Dutch football can’t have without flinching slightly: Argentina.
Lusail, 9 December, 2022, is the reference point that won’t go away. The Battle of Lusail, 18 yellow cards and a red, a record for any FIFA tournament remains one of the defining matches of the Argentina-Netherlands rivalry. Nahuel Molina and a Lionel Messi penalty had Argentina seemingly cruising, before substitute Wout Weghorst dragged the Dutch level with two goals in the dying embers, the second from a brilliantly disguised training-ground free-kick. Extra time settled nothing. Emiliano Martínez then saved two Dutch penalties in the shootout, with Lautaro Martinez scoring the decisive spot-kick to send Argentina through 4-3. It meant Argentina had eliminated the Dutch in both of their last two World Cup appearances.
Argentina arrive as world champions and have lost nothing of that swagger as Messi already off the mark with a hat-trick in the group stage, the side largely intact from Qatar. They remain favourites in most rooms whenever this conversation is had.
But this Dutch side is not the one Louis van Gaal left behind. Koeman has more attacking ammunition, and a 5-1 dismantling of a side many fancied for the knockouts is the kind of evidence that changes conversations, even with Sweden, not Argentina, on the end of it.
So could the Netherlands actually win this World Cup? It’s no longer an absurd question. The spine is elite, the goals are now coming from multiple sources, and unlike Qatar, this group isn’t relying on one substitute’s late heroics to paper over the cracks. Argentina still have their own gauntlet to run, and the Dutch have Tunisia first. But for the first time since that yellow-card-soaked night in Qatar, the Netherlands look capable of finally settling the score, not just being haunted by it.
In the latest hurdle of their title defence, Argentina will take on Ralf Rangnick’s Austria at 11pm on Monday.