Jurrien Timber starred for the Netherlands playing at left-back on Friday night, scoring a brace in a win over Greece and Arsenal teammate Christos Tzolis.
Arsenal teammates Jurrien Timber and Christos Tzolis faced off with their national teams on Friday, with the Netherlands taking on Greece in the Nations League.
The two teams had made unbeaten starts to the group stage, winning two games and drawing two games each. But any hopes of a close contest were quickly extinguished by a dominant Netherlands display.
Timber found himself playing at left-back, rather than his usual positions on the right or at centre-back. But he was still heavily involved in a free-scoring first half.
Timber played the pass before the goal for the Netherlands’ second and third goals of the half, which both came in the opening 20 minutes of the game.
The Arsenal defender then scored a striker’s finish from close range in the 40th minute, to make it 5-0. But the goals didn’t stop at half-time, and Timber popped up at the back post for another tap-in for 6-0 in the 59th minute.
With the Netherlands going on to score a seventh two minutes later, the game slowed down. The two teams made nine substitutions between them in the following 15 minutes, including the withdrawals of both Timber and Tzolis. The highlights are available here.
From an Arsenal point of view, considering the two players have been injured recently, it was good to see neither had to complete the full 90.
Greece may have suffered a damaging blow to their confidence, but they still have a chance to progress to the knockouts. If they better Germany’s result in the final games, they’ll make the Nations League quarter-finals.
The same is true if both teams draw or both lose. But if they both win, Germany will go through.
Greece host Serbia on Monday, November 16th, 19:45 GMT, whilst Germany host the Netherlands at the same time. Greece will have to hope the Netherlands are just as ruthless against Germany.
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