Mircea Lucescu: "Romania did not play against the Netherlands"

Former head coach of Dynamo Kyiv Mircea Lucescu, once again discussing the match 1/8 finals of Euro-2024 Romania - Netherlands (0:3), touched on the specifics of the Dutch national team.

"We didn't play against the Netherlands. We played against a number of players naturalized by the Dutch from all over the world.

In the Netherlands it is put on a stream to attract talented players from other countries at a very young age, which they train and bring to adult soccer already as Dutch. That is why now in the Dutch national team we could see people from Indonesia, Suriname, Ghana and even Curacao (an island in the Caribbean Sea - ed.). But there were only one or two Dutchmen in their national team.

And the Netherlands is not the only example in this regard. This is a global problem of world soccer," Lucescu told reporters at the airport in Bucharest after returning from Euro 2024.