The Netherlands leave it late to sink Senegal

CODY Gakpo scored a late goal on his World Cup debut and Davy Klaassen added a second deep in stoppage time to give the Netherlands a 2-0 win over Senegal in their Group A clash at the Al Thumama Stadium yesterday.

Coach Louis van Gaal handed goalkeeper Andries Noppert his first international cap and he had little to do as the Dutch defence stifled the African champions, though he did pull off a superb save in the 73rd minute to parry a stinging shot from Idrissa Gueye.

The Netherlands attack had been wasteful throughout, until the 23-yearold Gakpo stole through the middle and beat Edouard Mendy to a cross from Frenkie de Jong to send a glancing header into the net in the 84th minute.

Substitute Klaassen reacted quickest nine minutes into stoppage time to pounce on a rebound from a Memphis Depay shot and fire home to put the Dutch top of the group alongside Ecuador, whom they meet in their next game on Friday.

Earlier, England coach Gareth Southgate praised his players for their attacking verve in a 6-2 thrashing of Iran as they launched their World

Cup campaign but warned they had to improve defensively against the US on Friday.

“We're really pleased to start the tournament in this way and really pleased with our attacking play. We know that Iran usually are very difficult to score goals against,” Southgate said afterwards.

Bukayo Saka's double and firsthalf goals by Jude Bellingham and Raheem Sterling plus late efforts from substitutes Marcus Rashford and Jack Grealish resulted in a resounding win over Iran who had conceded only eight times in qualifying for Qatar.

Iran's two goals - both scored by Mehdi Taremi, including a penalty - came in the last half an hour and never looked like changing the tide of the match but Southgate said he was frustrated by his side's failure to keep a clean sheet.

“I didn't like the end of the game,” he said. “To concede two goals the way we did isn't the level that we need.

“So, we're going to have to be better than we were today in certain aspects of our game against the US because they're going to be coming for us full throttle, and we're going to have reset.”

While he acknowledged the difficulties for his players to keep their focus in a game that had a total of 26 minutes of stoppage time, Southgate said England would struggle to advance in the tournament if they allowed matches to drift again.

“It's a great start for us, it's a good platform to build on but ... there are things that we need to be better at if we are going to progress into the later stages,” he said.

Southgate said defender Harry Maguire came off after feeling ill during the match, but there were no other injury concerns.