Five goals, an amazing comeback, a red card and one of the best shots that you’ll ever see…
Holland and the Czech Republic meet in Prague tonight as both sides get their Euro 2014 qualifying campaigns underway.
Guus Hiddink takes over the Oranje reins from current Manchester United manager Louis Van Gaal and the Czechs will be looking to bounce back from the disappointment of not reaching the World Cup in Brazil.
The game should be exciting but we guarantee that it won’t be as good as their meeting 10 years ago at Euro 2004.
The countries met just over a decade ago in an epic encounter and to describe the match as a cracker would be a serious understatement.
The Czechs’ dramatic 3-2 comeback win is easily one of the greatest matches that we have ever seen and now seems like the perfect time to relive those frantic 90 minutes.
The venue: Estádio Municipal de Aveiro, Aveiro.
The star players: Van Der Sar, Stam, Seedorf, Robben, van Nistelrooy; Cech, Ujfaluši, Rosický, Nedved, Baros.
The context: Group D was delicately poised going into the second round of matches after the Czechs picked up a hard fought 2-1 win against Latvia while the Dutch managed to take a point off Germany in their opener.
The game itself: A frantic start was an indication of what was to come with Jan Koller almost scoring a spectacular volley in the first minute. Their were 21 shots on target in total during the 90 minutes.
The Dutch opened the scoring against the run of play thanks to a Wilfred Bouma header and they doubled their lead when the arch predator Ruud van Nistelrooy tapped home on 20 minutes, but the game remained frantic, open and end-to-end.
Koller halved the deficit but Holland almost restored their lead when Edgar Davids rattled the woodwork. Former Liverpool striker Milan Baroš equalised and his goal was a thing of beauty, Koller chested down Nedvěd’s cross and the striker’s stunning volley flew right into the top corner.
Heitinga was sent off with 15 minutes remaining before super-sub Vladimír Šmicer got the winner. Take a look.
Both teams managed to get out of the group and reach the semi-finals that year before they were knocked out by Portugal and Greece respectively.
In this author’s opinion, it’s one of the great shames of modern football that this Czech Republic side didn’t win Euro ’04. They were just superb to watch.
Oh yeah, we forgot to mention that their midfield magician Pavel Nedvěd almost scored one of the greatest long range goals in the history of football in this game also.
We reckon the crossbar is still shaking from this hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OkHOE1qV1c
Clip via – xXjuvellicaXx
