The Netherlands wrap up their Group D campaign at Euro 2024 with the luxury of knowing they\u2019ve already secured a spot in the knockout stage.<\/p>\n
Their journey began with a narrow win over Poland. Ronald Koeman\u2019s squad fell behind early to an Adam Buksa goal in Hamburg, but Cody Gakpo equalized with a deflected strike before super-sub Wout Weghorst clinched a 2-1 victory. A subsequent 0-0 draw with France, combined with other group results, guaranteed their place in the Round of 16, regardless of the outcome against Georgia.<\/p>\n
What makes this achievement even more impressive is that the Oranje have been performing without one of their key players. Frenkie de Jong, a linchpin for the Netherlands since his breakout at Ajax, has been notably absent. The 27-year-old Barcelona star, who earned his first of 54 international caps in September 2018 after the Netherlands missed the 2018 World Cup, has been a cornerstone in their three consecutive major tournament qualifications.<\/p>\n
As Koeman\u2019s squad continues their bid for glory in Germany, fans are left wondering about the whereabouts of de Jong and how his absence might impact the team\u2019s aspirations.<\/p>\n
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Frenkie de Jong\u2019s 2023\/24 season was marred by injuries, limiting him to just 20 LaLiga appearances for Barcelona. His troubles culminated in the Blaugrana\u2019s 3-2 Clasico defeat to arch-rivals Real Madrid on April 21, where he exited before halftime due to his third ankle setback of the campaign. Since then, de Jong has not played competitive football.<\/p>\n
Despite joining his Netherlands teammates and being named in Ronald Koeman\u2019s provisional squad for Euro 2024, de Jong left the squad after their final 4-0 warmup victory over Iceland.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe won\u2019t be fit enough to play at this level for the next three weeks,\u201d Koeman stated. \u201cThere\u2019s no point keeping him with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutch FA (KNVB) further clarified de Jong\u2019s condition, noting that tests \u201cshowed that the ankle is not yet sufficiently resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Netherlands wrap up their Group D campaign at Euro 2024 with the luxury of knowing they\u2019ve already secured a\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":35877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2804,3311],"class_list":["post-13967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-euro-2024","tag-frenkie-de-jong"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}