Portugal suffer heavy defeat by Netherlands

Sports Desk: The European champions, Portugal, suffered a dramatic first-half collapse and had João Cancelo sent off just after the hour in an embarrassing 3-0 World Cup warm-up defeat by the Netherlands on Monday.

Memphis Depay, Ryan Babel and Virgil van Dijk scored the goals after taking advantage of uncharacteristically slack defending by Portugal as the Dutch, who failed to qualify for this year’s World Cup, secured a first win for their new coach, Ronald Koeman.

The Portugal captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, began the match a hat-trick away from matching the Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas’s record of 84 goals as Europe’s all-time leading international striker but never looked like scoring one, let alone three. Portugal, who face Spain, Iran and Morocco in their World Cup group, dominated possession for the opening few minutes but the Dutch struck first when Depay beat José Fonte to a loose ball and fired into the net after 12 minutes.

Babel was completely unmarked to head in from Matthijs de Ligt’s cross at the far post in the 32nd minute and only a superb save by Anthony Lopes kept out a Depay header shortly afterwards. Then, on the stroke of half-time, a Depay free kick was teed up by De Ligt for the unmarked Van Dijk to fire home the third.

Portugal tightened up in defence after half-time and escaped further embarrassment but still suffered more misery when Cancelo was shown a second yellow card for a late challenge. The Dutch brought on Justin Kluivert, the 18-year-old son of their former forward Patrick, for his international debut in the 78th minute.

Agencies


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