The most recently silver-medaled islanders started the European Championship by defeating Serbia 1-0, but since then they have achieved four draws in regular time. According to unanimous opinions, the guard is performing worse than expected, the attempts of the national team captain Gareth Southgate for a successful starting team have not worked so far, and the seemingly tired forward line of Harry Kane-Phil Foden-Jude Bellingham - despite Kane and Bellingham's two goals each - does not seem effective.
"The teams play under enormous pressure in these tournaments and we have a lot of youngsters," Southgate said.
"We are also under a lot of pressure from the beginning, but we are holding up well. We don't score a lot of goals, but we met three teams with a very organized defense. It's a fact that Kane is not in top form, but he has an important role in the team," added the coach, who has played more than 100 games as head coach.
On the other side, Ronald Koeman had a hard time finding the most effective starting eleven, but at the same time, it is a big question whether he will stick to Memphis Depay up front or trust Wout Weghorst, who excelled after being replaced in the quarter-finals. The 1988 European champions, the Dutch, were 20 minutes away from the bye in the quarter-finals against the Turks before they could turn it around, and the fans, among other things, missed the commitment from the guard.
"We have to fight in the semi-finals," Koeman insisted. "Two teams with a long history will clash on Wednesday, the English have great players, but so do we," added the European champion specialist as a player succinctly.
As for the record against each other, out of the 32 battles so far, the English have won 13 times, and the Dutch have won nine times. They met twice at the European Championships, in 1988 the Oranje won 3-1 in Düsseldorf with a Marco van Basten hat-trick, and in 1996 the Three Lions won 4-1 at Wembley - with Southgate in the back line. However, out of the nine matches played since the latter, the English could only celebrate once.
They last met in the 2019 Nations League semi-finals, when the German national team won 3-1 in Guimaraes after extra time. Two of the quarter-finals of the current European Championship were decided by 11 goals, and in this statistic the English are clearly better: they were more accurate three times out of their last four shootouts in world competitions (only one of 19 penalties was missed), while the Dutch lost six of their eight matches so far. .
Expected starting teams:
England:
Pickford - Walker, Stones, Guehi, Trippier - Mainoo, Rice - Saka, Bellingham, Foden - Kane
Netherlands:
Verbruggen - Dumfries, De Vrij, Van Dijk, Aké - Schouten, Reijnders - Bergwijn, Simons, Gakpo - Depay
The English national team will compete against the Dutch team on Wednesday from 21:00, the referee will be the German Felix Zwayer, the meeting will be broadcast live by M4 Sport.
MTI
