Eliminated Tunisia aim to spoil the party against group-leading Netherlands

The Netherlands arrive at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on 25 June with one item of business left in Group F and a clean way to finish it. Level on points at the top of the table, they take first place with a win. Their opponents have no such sum to work out. Two defeats have already eliminated Tunisia.

Two teams walking in opposite directions

The Dutch found their attack again against Sweden, and found it emphatically. Brian Brobbey and Cody Gakpo each scored twice in a 5-1 win, a result that bore no resemblance to the cautious goalless draw they had ground out against Japan a few days earlier. The version of the Netherlands that turned up against Sweden is a side that has remembered what it is for.

Tunisia's tournament has run the other way. They have conceded nine goals across heavy defeats to Sweden and Japan, and they parted company with their coaching setup after the opening loss. A coaching change mid-tournament rarely steadies a squad so much as it confirms the squad already sensed something was wrong.

What first place is quietly worth

Topping a group is not a trophy, but it is rarely nothing. The order teams finish in shapes the bracket that follows, and the difference between first and second can decide rest days, travel, and which of the other groups a side is routed into. A team chasing top spot on the final day is playing for a schedule whose value it will not fully understand until the later rounds. That is the real stake behind an otherwise lopsided fixture.

The draw with Japan matters to that reading too. It showed a Netherlands willing to be cautious when the situation asked for it, which is a useful trait to carry into a knockout stage, and it is the discipline, not the five goals against Sweden, that tends to survive contact with better opposition.

What the last ninety minutes are for

Tunisia play for the less tangible things a departing team collects: the performance that salvages some pride, the young player who wants the finals to have shown him something, the senior professional quietly weighing whether this was his last major tournament. None of it moves the table. All of it travels home with the squad.

The gap in quality is wide, and the in-form Dutch forwards should settle the match before any of those questions get asked. The straightforward prediction is Tunisia 0-2 Netherlands, with the Dutch finishing top of Group F.

The detail worth watching is not the scoreline but whether the Netherlands can reproduce the Sweden performance against opponents with nothing to protect and no shape left to hold. A team already out can be awkward precisely because it has stopped calculating. A win built on the same movement and pressing that undid Sweden would mean more for the rounds ahead than a comfortable result handed over by a side that has already stopped counting.