Dutch rally to snuff out memorable comeback

Total Football? More like total relief. After seven years in the wilderness, when Holland’s vibrant orange glow turned a bashful red, their return to the main stage summed up the absence with elation swinging towards despair and back again as Europe’s great entertainers re-emerged.

No one had expected the nation that finished third at the 2014 World Cup to be missing from the big show in France two years later and Russia in 2018. Nor had anyone expected their return, in front of 16,000 fortunate home fans at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, to be quite so thrilling.

An entertaining first half whet the appetite for what was to come having indicated Holland’s ability to take a two-goal lead, courtesy of Georginio Wijnaldum and