Advocaat Gets Worried As Van Dijk Puts Dutch World Cup Hopes At Risk ! Wednesday, 9th Aug 2017 09:42 Every pundit who can cash a cheque from Sky Sports or Talksport is willing to give their opinion on Virgil Van Dijk, but ultimately they are not as worried about what happens as Dick Advocaat. Whilst the headlines are being made about the ifs and buts of Virgil Van Dijk's move to Liverpool which of course is "close" little has been made of how the player himself by his behaviour is putting his countries hopes of World Cup Qualification at risk. That is why Netherland's team boss DickAdvocaat has been having his say. Last week Advocaat publicly stated that he felt Van Dijk should move to Liverpool, but his motives for suggesting that were purely personal, with vital World Cup qualifying games coming up at the end of August, Advocaat needs Van Dijk fit and available. With every weekend that passes that is highly unlikely. Advocaat will have spoken to Van Dijk several weeks ago and been aware of his attitude, perhaps he would have hoped that the player would knuckle down, train with Saints and get a game or two under his belt, perhaps he even advised Van Dijk to do that for the good of his country if nothing else. But if he did then the player wasnt interested, the Dutch hopes in a few weeks and indeed perhaps Van Dijk's only chance of playing in a World Cup finals tournament seem to be secondary to his desire to have a big pay day at Liverpool. This being the case Advocaat would be desperate to see the move to Anfield go through quickly, if it did then he would hope that three weeks training and a game or two would be enough to get Van Dijk fit enough to help his country. The Netherlands are in group A and to be blunt things are not looking good, they face a do or tie trip to France on August 31st followed by another in a home game against Bulgaria. At the moment with four games left to play the group is as follows Sweden 13 points (automatic qualification) Holland have to play France A (31st August) Bulgaria H (3rd Sept) Belarus A (7th October) & finally Sweden H (10th October) Having already played luxembourg twice they probably have the toughest run in. If they should lose to France in a three weeks time then they would be six points behind the French with 3 games to play, France playing Luxembourg whilst Holland hosted Bulgaria could see the Dutch eliminated on 3rd September depending on how Sweden got on away to Bulgaria and Belarus. Put bluntly the Dutch cannot afford to lose in Paris. If France were to beat Holland and then beat Luxembourg whilst Sweden won their two games then it would be game over and Russia 2018 would not see the Dutch grace the tournament. Of course their are plenty of scenarios to play out, but the probem for the Dutch is that everyone else has to play Luxembourg and they don't. This is why Dick Advocaat is so desperate to get Van Dijk fit for his squad in three weeks, even at this late notice, assuming that Van Dijk has a reasonable level of fitness from training initially with the Saints squad and now alone, if he could get a couple of games in the Premier League under his belt then he might be able to play against France even if it was off the bench. But it looks unlikely that the situation will be sorted, even if Van Dijk was assimilated back into the Saints squad today, he would not be match fit for the opener against Swansea meaning that there would only be two other possible outings for him before the World Cup break, possibly if he started training next week he could play at Huddersfield and that would give him some fitness, the same timescale would apply if a move was to go ahead. But neither scenarios look likely at this stage and that would leave Advocaat desperately going into this two game do or die situation. Even if they come through to live to fight another day, if Van Dijk has not moved and is still not back in the Saints squad then he would not be ready for the two final games. Advocaat's only real hope is that he can keep the Dutch hopes alive and that the Van Dijk situation is settled one way or the other, if that is the case and the player is still at St Mary's you can bet that Advocaat will change his tune about a move being right for Van Dijk and be urging him to play for his club. From a Saints perspective this would not be a bad thing if we kept him, perhaps wit the transfer window closedVan Dijk would think of is country and indeed his career rather than his bank balance. Imagine if an English player was in the same situation as Van Dijk and with our World Cup hopes in the balance, he would be public enemy number 1 Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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