It seems like I chose as good a day as any to start a Dutch international soccer blog, as the Netherlands ran over Bulgaria, going second in their Euro 2008 qualifying group. Wesley Sneijder and Ruud van Nistelrooy were on target as the Dutch won 2-0 over Dimitar Berbatov's squad.
The Netherlands are now 3 points behind Romania (who beat Belarus 3-1 today) in Group G, but have a game in hand. We leapfrogged Bulgaria who are now 2 points behind.
The game began with Marco van Basten opting to play three men up front, Robin van Persie, Ryan Babel, and Ruud van Nistelrooij (his first international since his falling out with van Basten after the World Cup last summer). Babel started in the absence of the injured Arjen Robben. Edwin van der Sar started in goal as usual. The other starters for Holland were Wilfred Bouma, Mario Melchiot, Johnny Heitinga, Joris Mathijsen, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Demy de Zeeuw , and the excellent Wesley Sneijder. Excluded from the starting lineup due to injury were Rafael van der Vaart and Denny Landzaat.
Bulgaria started the game well, missing out on two decent scoring chances when Petrov had a deflected shot saved by van der Sar and the sublime Berbatov headed wide from a corner. They were made to rue these missed chances when Sneijder, who has scored 3 goals in his first 2 games for Real Madrid, scored from a 20 meter free kick in the 23rd minute.
Van Nistelrooy added a second for the Oranje after latching on to Ryan Babel's pass in the 58th minute. We came close to a third when Clarence Seedorf (who had come on for Sneijder) hit the post with a shot in the 80th minute.
Bulgaria tried to fight back with some decent late chances, but once again failed to capitalize, allowing the Dutch to go second in the group. Bouma cleared a shot from Petrov off of the line in the 76th minute, and van der Sar was just able to tip Berbatov's 84th minute shot over the post.
Sneijder and van Nistelrooy, the pair from Madrid, have set us in prime position for qualifying for the Euro 2008 finals, and with a game in hand against the group leaders it wouldn't be too forward to guess that we could end up first in Group G. Overall, it was a good day for Dutch football.
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