By
Eniola Olatunji.

Super sub Forward, Donyell Malen of Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday night scored a brace to sink Romania in a 3-0 onslaught at the Round of 16 of the European championship.

Ref Felix Zwayer of Germany had a good outing before a 65,012 capacity stadium at Allianz Arena in the match that Cody Gakpo opened scoring through Xavi Simons connect in the 20th minute.

Malen had come as substitute for Steven Bergwijn in the 46th minute to score at 83rd minute through Cody Gakpo and netted the 3rd goal in the 90+3rd minute. Netherlands would have recorded 4-0 but Gakpo’s goal in the 63rd minute was ruled offside by Ref Zwayer.

Netherlands dominated the match with 6-1 shots on target; 12-3 shots off target; 61-39% ball possession and 13-4 corner kicks while the yellow cards were even 2-2 though the Romanian Goalkeeper saved 3 goal bound shots and the Dutch Keeper only had a single save.  

The only time Romania ever defeated Netherlands was at the 2007 Euro Group G qualifier played at home with a one goal win after the first leg had ended goalless. There was a friendly match of 2000 that Netherlands won 2-1.  In a world cup qualifier of Euro Group 1 in 2005, Netherlands banged Romania two goals to nothing in each leg. The goal tally was repeated in 2008 at the Euro Group C championship.

Then came the world cup Group D qualifier of 2012, which Netherlands slammed Romania 4-1 in Budapest and in 2013 scaled Romania 4-0 in the 2nd leg. Their last meeting was in 2017 in a friendly match that Netherlands won 3-0 in Budapest. 

Netherlands emerged 3rd in Group D at this tournament with 4 points having beaten Poland 2-1; played goalless with France and lost 2-3 to Austria.

Netherlands were European Champions in 1988 and won Bronze in 1976 but the Third place match has been cancelled now.

Romania was top of Group E where all the teams, Romania, Belgium Slovakia and Ukraine scored 4 points each. Romania had 4 goals and conceded 3 goals; Belgium scored 2 goals and conceded 1 while Slovakia scored 3 goals and conceded 3 goals. Romania had beaten Ukraine 3-0; lost 0-2 to Belgium and drew 1-1 with Slovakia. Romania is yet to score a Podium finish.

Netherlands is on standby to meet the winner of the match between Austria and Turkey coming up shortly in the 3rd quarterfinals on Saturday at 6pm in Berlin.

There are other Round of 16 matches that had been decided where Spain had beaten the only Debutante at the tournament, Georgia 4-1 and the German Machine neutralized Denmark 2-0 for both winners to play the first quarterfinals on Friday by 6pm Nigerian Time at Stuttgart.

Portugal was lucky to earn a place in the quarterfinals as she played goalless at full time with Slovania and won the first Penalty shootouts of the tournament 3-0. Portugal Captain, Christiana Ronaldo lost the first kick and both he and his mother wept like the wailing woman in Rama.

France got a place by a lucky 1-0 win over Belgium and both France and Portugal will fight to finish in the 2nd quarterfinal on Friday at 9pm in Hamburg.

The Three Lions of England struggled to beat Slovakia 2-1 in a pulsating Round of 16 match and will meet Switzerland that dismissed the Defending Champions, The Azzuris of Italy by 2-0 in the 4th quarterfinal on Saturday by 9pm at Dusseldorf. 

This is the 17th edition of the European Championship that has now seen 94 goals scored with 2,170,616 as at Monday night with three joint top scorers in Georges Mikautadze of Georgia; Jamal Musiala of Germany and Ivan Schranz of Slovakia all having three goals each.