Ronald Koeman announced the Netherlands’ twenty-six-man squad on the twenty-seventh of May, a day after the original scheduled date — the delay driven by the need to confirm the fitness of several players who had picked up late-season injuries. The squad that emerged is what you would predict for a team that has consistently combined defensive organisation with technical attacking quality under Koeman’s management: van Dijk anchoring the back, Frimpong providing the explosive right flank, Gakpo as the left-channel threat, and a midfield built around physicality and the ability to transition at pace.
The name that is not there is Xavi Simons. The Leipzig midfielder — on loan from PSG, one of the most technically accomplished central midfielders in European football at twenty-three — sustained a devastating knee injury in the spring that ended his season and ended his World Cup. His absence is the most significant blow this squad has absorbed since its construction began and the question of whether Netherlands can compensate for his creative contribution is the analytical problem that Koeman’s group must solve.
The Group
Netherlands are in Group F alongside Japan, Tunisia and Sweden. Japan, under their manager, have been one of the most consistently competitive teams in Asian football — their 2022 World Cup results (beating both Germany and Spain in the group stage) a reminder that pre-tournament assessments of this group are not straightforward. Sweden, qualifying through UEFA, bring Dejan Kulusevski and Viktor Gyökeres — the Arsenal striker who scored thirty-plus in the Premier League this season — as quality to be respected. Tunisia represent the CAF pathway.
Netherlands should advance from this group. Whether they do so looking like a genuine contender for the later stages or as a workmanlike qualifier depends on how the Simons absence is covered.
Virgil van Dijk
Virgil van Dijk is in his mid-thirties. He is, still, one of the two or three best central defenders in the world by any defensive metric available. His season at Liverpool — in a year when Liverpool finished fifth and collapsed in the second half — included personal performances that remained consistently excellent even as the collective disintegrated around him. His reading of the game, his authority in duels, his ability to organise the defensive line verbally and positionally across ninety minutes of tournament football — these are gifts that remain fully present.
He will captain the Netherlands. He will be the first defender opponents plan around. He will be, in the matches that decide this tournament’s outcome for the Oranje, the figure on whom everything defensive rests.
Frimpong’s New Context
Jeremie Frimpong was signed by Liverpool from Bayer Leverkusen this season, following the £116.5 million departure of Florian Wirtz to the same club. His adaptation to the Premier League — operating as a right wing-back or right back, providing the pace and directness in the wide right channel that Liverpool’s attacking system requires — has been successful, his five goals and eight assists confirming the attacking contribution that Leverkusen supporters already knew.
For the Netherlands, he functions as the right wing-back or right back who provides width in the final third — the player who makes the run that puts the defence in two minds, who crosses or cuts back, who, when he is playing at his highest level, is functionally an additional forward. His pace against any defensive line that tries to sit off him is a specific problem that opponents will need to manage, and that Koeman will want to exploit in the transitions.
Jorrel Hato, now at Chelsea, provides the left-sided complement — a twenty-year-old whose positional intelligence and technical quality have advanced rapidly, his season at Ajax before the Chelsea move establishing him as one of the most promising defenders in European football.
Without Xavi Simons
Simons’s absence changes how Netherlands can play centrally. He was, in Koeman’s system, the player who connected midfield and attack — who dropped to receive, who drove forward, who created the space between the lines for the forwards to run into. His absence leaves a gap between what Tijjani Reijnders and the other midfielders provide and what the attack needs in that linking role.
The candidates for replacement are capable players but none of them are Xavi Simons at twenty-three, playing the best football of his life. Koeman will likely ask Reijnders — who has had a strong season at AC Milan — to take on more of the creative responsibility, supported by the energy of younger players around him.
The squad’s resilience in absorbing this loss — and the degree to which the collective quality in defence and wide positions can compensate for the central creative reduction — will determine whether Netherlands is a genuine contender beyond the last sixteen.
The Verdict
Netherlands will advance from Group F. Whether the squad without Simons can produce the quality of football their best results suggest is possible — the 2022 World Cup run to the quarter-finals, the Euro 2024 semi-final — depends on Koeman’s ability to construct a system that compensates for the one quality he cannot replace.
The Dutch are at their best when the defensive foundation is impeccable and the wide players — Gakpo, Frimpong, the right winger from depth — can run at opponents in transition with the space that the defensive discipline creates. If that pattern holds across the knockout rounds, Netherlands are a quarter-final team at least, a semi-final team if the draw is kind, and a potential finalist if everything goes right.
The shadow of Simons hangs over the whole conversation. The talent that remains is real. Koeman’s experience is real. Whether it is enough without the player who would have been central to the answer is what the tournament will decide.