After the goal the home side lost concentration and for a while Scotland were back in the game. Steven Pressley was brought down on the edge of the area after 25 minutes. Darren Fletcher's free-kick found the head of Lee Wilkie but his attempt ended up in the side-netting and Holland immediately went back on the attack. On 32 minutes Jackie McNamara brought down Marc Overmars on the edge of the area and Andre Ooijer headed in Sneijder's free-kick from close-range. Three minutes later they stretched their lead. This time it was through van Nistelrooy scoring his 12th international goal with a carbon copy of Ooijer's earlier effort. Scotland held on until half-time with the scoreline looking recoverable (just) at 3-0. Scotland manager Vogts made two changes for the second half bringing off Paul Dickov and Gary Naysmith and replacing them with Maurice Ross and Stevie Crawford. But the changes failed to bring any stability to the Scotland side and five minutes after the restart van Nistelrooy scored his second of the night to effectively put the tie out of reach. The Manchester United striker kept his cool as Douglas charged off his line to make the save, and lobbed the ball over the keeper into the back of the net. Even with a three-goal advantage on aggregate the Dutch did not let up and on 65 minutes Scotland were punished again from a set-piece. Substitute Frank de Boer made a run across the box as Sneijder sailed in a corner kick and the veteran headed in to make it 5-0 on the night. With the Scotland defence posted missing, van Nistelrooy completed his hat-trick picking his spot from ten yards out to fire home and seal the win. Netherlands: Van der Sar, Ooijer, Reiziger, Bouma, Van der Meyde, Van der Vaart, Cocu, Sneijder, Davids, Overmars, van Nistelrooy Subs: Makaay, Robben, Kluivert, De Boer, Waterreus, Van Hooijdonk, Seedorf Scotland: Douglas, McNamara, Pressley, Wilkie, Naysmith, Fletcher, Ferguson, McCann, Rae, McFadden, Dickov Subs: Gould, Graham Alexander, Caldwell, Crawford, Miller, Hutchison, Ross Referee: Michel Lubos (Slovakia) | ||
Editorial Team Ger Harley (ger@scottishfitba.net) |
