Mbappe leads France in Euro 2024 group against teams he loves scoring against
Munich: France and the Netherlands renew their recent rivalry at the European Championship with fresh memories of their hard luck exits at the World Cup 18 months ago. Both were beaten in Qatar in penalty shootouts against Argentina — France in the epic final, the Dutch in the quarter-finals — after rallying late from two goals down.
The first post-World Cup game for each was the opener of their Euro 2024 qualifying group in March last year. France raced to an early three-goal lead and won 4-0 in Paris.
Group D:
FRANCE
France reached the final in three of its past four major tournaments, winning the 2018 World Cup, with just Euro 2020 counting as a failure. Kylian Mbappé’s penalty was saved and France lost the shootout to Switzerland after a 3-3 draw in the round of 16. Mbappé arrives for his first tournament game since that 2022 World Cup final hat trick in a losing cause against Argentina, as captain of the most talented squad at Euro 2024.
NETHERLANDS
Ronald Koeman has coached the Netherlands through qualifying for back-to-back European Championships. This time he sees the job through to the finals tournament. After Euro 2021 was postponed for one year in the COVID-19 pandemic, Koeman left to take the coveted job at his former club Barcelona, still then with Lionel Messi. The Dutch went to the last Euro coached by Frank de Boer and lost in the round of 16 to the Czech Republic. Koeman was fired by Barcelona after 14 months and one Spanish cup title, then re-hired by the Dutch federation to succeed Louis van Gaal after the 2022 World Cup.
AUSTRIA
Predicting a “dark horse” contender to be European champion has recently been a fool’s errand. Austria in 2016 and Turkey three years ago both went home winless after the group stage. Still, Austria has been in the conversation again.
POLAND
Poland was beaten easily by France at the World Cup, 3-1 in the round of 16 in Qatar. That tournament seemed to give little joy to the Polish players under cautious coach Czeslaw Michniewicz, who left soon after. It did not improve with Fernando Santos, the Euro 2016-winning coach for Portugal, who was fired last September.
