Infected with that white noise, Maarten Stekelenburg fumbled a low cross just past his own post. There was no safe place, nowhere to rest.įinally something horrible happened. The Dutch were trapped, unable to make a pass, unable to move upfield through the thick, muscular white wall in front of them. But that was exactly what Holland did, a team confounded by adversity. There is no rule that states teams that are one man down must out of necessity defend desperately, paddling instantly for dear life. Instead they simply shrank from the moment. For a £67m defender, he has such an obvious weakness in his basic athleticism, a footballer who looks utterly commanding, as long as you don’t ask him to turn around very quickly.ĭown to 10 men, the Dutch basically collapsed. Schick had a clear goalscoring chance had De Ligt not handled, with the intent to cheat an opponent who had got the better of him.ĭe Ligt left the pitch distraught. A yellow card was flourished, then upgraded to a straight red after a check of the screen. It was an absurd thing to do in the time of VAR. Thighs pumping, hands scrambling for a hold, he fell on the ball, hooking it with his arm. It was there, laid out in those individual shutter frames, that De Ligt sensed the moment getting away from him.
De Ligt stumbled, slipped, then couldn’t turn quickly enough. With 54 minutes gone Patrik Schick wriggled around him as the ball was played through. He often seems to find himself scrambling, scrabbling, grabbing shirts. But between the 54th and 68th minutes the Netherlands simply unravelled in Budapest, as a balanced goalless game transformed into a world of stumbles, flaps and panics.ĭe Ligt can be a cumbersome footballer. It takes something to reach this stage of a tournament, and then produce this kind of mid-air stall.