After their convincing wins in the Round of 16 at the World Cup, Netherlands and Argentina will face each other in the quarterfinals, on Friday at 22:00, and the winner will take on the winner of the Croatia – Brazil match. And while the whole planet dreams of Argentina – Brazil semifinal, Netherlands coach Louis Van Gaal is not so impressed. After claiming that his team plays as good as Neymar and co. and that A Selecao is basically ‘a counter team’, former Manchester United, Bayern and Barcelona coach talked about his next opponent, Argentina, and their weakest link – Lionel Messi. Louis van Gaal is unbeaten as Netherlands manager since returning in 2021 (19 games).He’s also never lost a World Cup match excluding shootouts.Legend 👏 pic.twitter.com/8wpA8AY14F— B/R Football (@brfootball) December 3, 2022 “Messi is the most dangerous creative player, he is able to create a lot and to score goals himself. But when they lose the ball and the opponent has possession he doesn’t participate much, and this gives us chances to exploit” revealed Van Gaal to NOS. Netherlands manager Louis van Gaal kisses defender Denzel Dumfries to show his appreciation 🇳🇱 pic.twitter.com/omTxzQBNDU— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) December 3, 2022 On Friday, Messi will face his former teammate and key to Holland’s midfield, Frenkie De Jong. Barca’s player has seen enough of the Argentinian ace and knows it will be hard to stop him. “We haven’t texted and I don’t plan to. I think we have a good chance of reaching the semi-finals, but you can only stop Messi as a team. He has been making the difference against anyone for 15 years and there is no way to stop him. They have tried every way possible and very often they have failed. Sacrificing people is difficult, because then other players will be released. It’s a 50-50 match” said De Jong. Louis van Gaal unimpressed with Brazil: I read that they played beautifuly, our goal was betterAnd Netherlands stopper Virgil Van Dijk also thinks that has to be a really good plan in order to stop Messi. “The difficult thing about him is when we are attacking, he is chilling somewhere in a corner or something. You have to be so very sharp in terms of defensive organisation. They always looked for him to try to make it difficult for us on the counter. It is an honour to play against him. It is not me against him, or the Netherlands against him, but the Netherlands against Argentina. No one can do it on his own, we will have to come up with a good plan” said Van Dijk. ##NAJAVA_MECA_6871887##
