England Defeated By Holland

Ash­ley Young

In the month of Feb­ru­ary 1977, The Neth­er­lands National Foot­ball Team gave their Eng­lish coun­ter­parts a les­son in clin­ical fin­ish­ing as the Dutch­men ran out fully deserved win­ners in the inter­na­tional friendly match at Wemb­ley Sta­dium. On Wed­nes­day night, foot­ball his­tory repeated itself with The Dutch Eleven tri­umphant yet again.

The Three Lions star­ted brightly and could have taken an early lead when a dan­ger­ous header from Chelsea centre half Gary Cahill nar­rowly flew over the cross­bar. As the first half pro­gressed, how­ever, the match slowed down with both sides play­ing the ball in the middle of the park and not many scor­ing chances cre­ated. Then in the 56th minute of the con­test, Bay­ern Munich winger Arjen Rob­ben picked up the ball inside his own half before run­ning the length of the pitch to score the open­ing goal. Just one minute later, the vis­it­ing side scored again as striker Klaas-Jan Hunte­laar headed home a mag­ni­fi­cent cross ball from Dirk Kuyt. The home side finally man­aged to score in the 85 minute of action when a long through ball from Ever­ton player Leighton Baines found fel­low defender Gary Cahill who slot­ted into the bot­tom corner to give the hosts some hope. There was more to come only five minutes later when Manchester United fron­trun­ner Ash­ley Young col­lec­ted a fine pass from team­mate Phil Jones and lif­ted the ball over Maarten Stekelen­burg to make the score 2–2. But then in stop­page time, Hol­land even­tu­ally gave Eng­land the coup de grace when Arjen Rob­ben beat Joe Hart with a curl­ing shot from inside the box.

Manchester United Memorabilia