Netherlands vs Belarus Predictions

It’s been a tough time to be a Dutch football fan over the last few years. They missed out on Euro 2016 three years ago after a dreadful qualifying campaign, with that being the first time since 1984 that they failed to make the European Championships. They followed that with another disappointing showing, failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, to make for a miserable summer.

Ronald Koeman was brought in to try and breathe some life into the faltering national team, and while they have a long qualifying campaign ahead of them, it’s been an undeniably promising opening year for the former Everton boss.

Netherlands have already topped their UEFA Nations League group and could win a place in Euro 2020 via that route next summer, but ideally they will want to top their Euro 2020 qualifying group ahead of main rivals Germany.

The real exciting thing about this Dutch squad is the depth of young talent present. They have a number of more experienced players in their ranks such as Virgil van Dijk, Daley Blind, Memphis Depay, and Georginio Wijnaldum. However, the main talking points are the host of Dutch-based youngsters such as Matthijs de Ligt, Denzel Dumfries, Frenkie de Jong, Donny van de Beek, and Steven Bergwijn.

Belarus have no such pool of talent though. 37 year old Alexander Hleb remains in the squad and is one of 14 players included over the age of 30. They did manage to finish top of their UEFA Nations League group, but in all honesty that was expected after facing the likes of Luxembourg, San Marino, and Moldova.

Holland’s return to form has been a drastic one. They have only lost to France and England since Ronald Koeman took charge over a year ago, and in that time they have beaten big teams such as Portugal, Germany, and France. At home they have won three of their four games under Koeman, and considering their last two outings have been a 2-0 win over France and a 3-0 thrashing of Germany, we’re expecting a comfortable win for them on Thursday.

For this reason, along with the fact that the Netherlands have beaten Belarus by at least three goals in three of their four home meetings with them, we like the look of Netherlands -2.0 Asian Handicap along with a 3-0 correct score prediction.