In the third round of Group D of the European Championship, the Netherlands fell behind twice and came back twice, but ultimately lost 3-2 to Austria, eventually qualifying as third in the group. After the game, Netherlands head coach Koeman spoke to the media.
Koeman said: “If you’re not standing well defensively, and you’re not aggressive enough, that’s obviously a bad performance. And also, we didn’t communicate well enough. I don’t think we did enough in preparation, but it’s my responsibility, it’s a bad performance.”
“I saw them man-marking too much, instead of using space. I’m not going to abandon the players, but on the second and third goals, our players didn’t follow the opponent well enough. Substitutions? As a national team coach, if we play like this, you have to intervene.”
“We were behind in all areas in the opening stages, they had many chances, we weren’t aggressive enough, we didn’t put enough pressure on them. We didn’t control the game early enough, then we played a little better, we had some chances, but they punished us. We have to take responsibility for our performance, we didn’t deserve a better result.”
“We knew before the game that if we got third, we would face a strong team in the next round. We will wait and see what happens.”
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