Four days ago, it looked like the Netherlands’ journey at the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Morocco 2025™ would come to an early end. A 5-0 defeat to Korea DPR to finish the group stage meant not only that they would miss out on direct qualification for the round of 16, but finishing among the four best third-placed teams also seemed like a long shot.
Now, they are fresh off of an almost miraculous victory against USA to make it to the quarter-finals on their tournament debut.
“I’m speechless. What we did as a team is not usual,” Lina Touzani told FIFA after the game. Speechlessness was a theme as the Dutch players were bubbling with emotions after the game, with even coach Olivier Amelink having a tough time finding words to describe his team’s surprise win: “I didn’t know. But we believed, we believed.”
The USA entered the match heavily favoured after scoring the most goals during the group stage, conceding only twice, and impressing overall with their on-pitch performances. The Netherlands, meanwhile, narrowly won their opening game 4-3 against Cameroon before losing 1-0 to Mexico and Korea DPR. They then had to wait another 24 hours to find out their knockout round fate.
“It was hard, but our team spirit is really strong and we stayed connected with each other,” Touzani said. “We never give up, that really describes the feeling in our team.”
“[The game against Korea DPR] was really defeating, but we had some good talks,” said Liv Pennock to FIFA about what they did in the days between the games. “We made a wonderful plan, and we executed it tonight and were able to correct a lot of mistakes.”
“We needed to wait for the other games,” said goalkeeper Maren Groothoff. “So when that was done, there was a lot of joy, smiles. It was great that we didn’t need to go home!”
Now, the European champions get to stay in the tournament even longer and will face Spain or France in the quarter-finals. “Now we have to do this again, and again, and again. And then every opponent will have a tough game against us,” Amelink said.
“It’s amazing,” Pennock, who received the Player of the Match award, said. “We scored really early in the match again, and that was a really exciting feeling! Then we just kept it all small and won on penalties.”
“I already did it in the European Championship last May, so I knew what was coming,” said Groothoff. In the spot kicks, the Dutch shot-stopper faced seven shots and saved the last attempt to give the Netherlands the win. “We knew that we can do it, because we did it before. So I was very relaxed, not stressed or anything. I thought, yeah, we’ve got this. We’re going to win.”
And win they did, pulling off the first big upset in the knockout stages of this year’s U-17 Women’s World Cup.
