Portugal suffer in friendly with Dutch

GENEVA – Reuters

European champions Portugal suffered a first-half collapse and had Joao Cancelo sent off just past the hour in an embarrassing 3-0 World Cup warm-up defeat by the Netherlands on March 26.

Memphis Depay, Ryan Babel and Virgil van Dijk all scored by taking advantage of uncharacteristically slack defending by Portugal as the Dutch, who failed to qualify for this year’s World Cup, secured a first win for new coach Ronald Koeman.

Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo began the match a hat-trick away from matching Hungarian Ferenc Puskas’s record of 84 goals as Europe’s all-time leading international marksmen but never looked like scoring one, let alone three.

Portugal coach Fernando Santos, who made nine changes from the team which beat Egypt 2-1 in a friendly on March 23 and handed a debut to Napoli fullback Mario Rui, took the blame.

“It could have gone better but the responsibility for the defeat is mine,” he said.