Every four years, at least one (semi) unknown player usually breaks into the most anticipated football event. A handful of names come out of memory in this century: Miroslav Klose in Korea and Japan in 2002, Fabio Grosso in Germany in 2006, Thomas Müller in South Africa in 2010, James Rodríguez in Brazil in 2014 or Benjamin Pavard in Russia in 2018. has not even reached the middle of this World Cup, there is already a powerful candidate who is running as a revelation: Cody Gakpo.
Lovers of the Eredivisie or the Europa League will smile when they read these lines. The young Dutch attacker (23 years old) has been a differential footballer for PSV for a long time, but in case some big clueless club still did not know him, what better than a World Cup to expose himself. For the third consecutive game in Qatar, Gakpo opened the scoring for Luis van Gaal's men and led to a comfortable tulip victory. Three points that give them access to the round of 16 as first group (2-0), ahead of Senegal.
Gakpo and company once again brought out the embarrassments of Qatar. The emirate has put all their efforts – their own and those of the exploited migrant workers – to show the world an exemplary organization, but they forgot to be more demanding on the pitch. It is known that they have tried, but there is no doubt that the team led by Félix Sánchez -champion of the last Asian Cup, it must not be forgotten- has not been enough to be competitive in the tournament with the most pedigree in the world. planet. Money can not with everything.
If on the first day it became the first hostess not to get anything positive from the first game, in the last of the group stage it was confirmed as the worst in history. Since the creation of the World Cup almost a century ago, all host countries had achieved at least one victory. Until now Switzerland in 1954 was the one with the worst balance. With this dubious honor, Qatar has broken all records: zero points, one goal for and seven against.
With nothing at stake, they only had pride. However, in front he ran into one of the top teams that did not even need to mess up to win with solvency. Van Gaal made some changes to the eleven and they responded on the green of the Al Bayt stadium.
For the first time in two months Memphis played a starting game. Recovered from his physical problems and rested for weeks for not wanting to force Barça, the striker played the leading role in the first goal in the 26th minute. He started the triangulation with Gakpo and Klaassen (the other novelty in the attack) finished by the own Gakpo: speed up and low shot adjusted. With his third goal, he is already the top scorer, tied with Enner Valencia and Kylian Mbappé.
As soon as play resumed in the second half, Frenkie de Jong took advantage of Meshaal Barsham's clearance after Memphis's shot. Berghuis was able to turn the victory into a win in the 68th minute, but the referee disallowed the goal at the request of the VAR due to a previous hand.
A Clockwork Orange moves forward without making much noise or having been squeezed. It is still unknown how he will perform against bigger rivals. Without being the one she wanted, Qatar says goodbye making history.
2 - Países Bajos: Andries Noppert; Jurrien Timber, Virgil van Dijk, Nathan Ake, Denzel Dumfries; Marten de Roon (Teun Koopmeiners, m.82), Frankie de Jong (Kenneth Taylor, m.86), Deley Blind; Davy Klaassen (Steven Berghuis, m.66), Cody Gakpo (Wout Weghorst, m.83) y Memphis Depay (Vincent Janssen, m.66).
0 - Qatar: Meshaal Aissa Barsham; Ismail Mohammad (Musab Al Khader, m.85), Pedro Miguel, Boualem Khoukhi, Abdelkarim Hassan, Homan Ahmed; Abdelaziz Hatem (Ahmed Alaaeldin, m.85), Assim Madibo (Karim Boudiaf, m.64), Hasan Al Heidos (Ali Assadalla Thaimn Qamb, m.64); Akram Afif y Almoez Ali Zainalabedeen Abdulla (Mohammed Muntari, m.64) .
Goals: 1-0, m.26: Cody Steel; 2-0, m.49: Frankie De Jong.
Referee: Bakary Gassama (GAM). He showed a yellow card to Nathan Aké, from the Netherlands.
Incidents: match of the third day of Group A of the Qatar 2022 World Cup played at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor before 66,784 spectators.
