Netherlands vs Republic of Ireland Preview

The Netherlands will look to finally secure an automatic place in the 2024 European Championship to be held in Germany next year when they face the Republic of Ireland at the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam this Saturday.

Ronald Koeman’s men already have one foot in Germany after securing a playoff spot following a 1-0 win over Greece in their last outing. But getting an automatic qualification spot in this game will be on their minds. All they need to do here to achieve that is beat the Republic of Ireland whose hopes of making next summer’s finals are already over.

However, they can also qualify no matter the result in Amsterdam if Greece lose to France in the other Group B game.

They will fancy their chances of getting a good result here, though, given their record of two home wins and a single loss in their Euro qualifier campaign.

The Oranje have conceded more than a goal per match on average, although six of their seven goals against, and both defeats (W4, L2), came against group leaders France.

The only other side to score against them was none other than their Saturday visitors, Ireland, who they beat in an eventual 2-1 win to maintain their perfect winning H2H record in this sphere (W4).

The visitors are only playing for the sake of completing their quota of qualifier matches, having already missed out on a place in Germany next year following a run of five losses from seven qualifier games (W2).

As it stands in Group B, only lowly Gibraltar, who have zero wins and zero goals, have performed worse than them. In fact, Stephen Kenny’s men put up a show in their last game against the group’s bottom feeders, beating them 4-0 away from home.

That win forms part of the miserly eleven wins Kenny has enjoyed in his tenure as Ireland boss (W11, D10, L17). And so, with most of those other wins coming against the likes of Latvia, Malta and other lowly-rated sides, it is difficult to make a case for his side beating the Netherlands on Saturday.