Netherlands arrived in Monterrey with one old wound still hanging over the trip: the penalty that knocked Mexico out of the 2014 World Cup. Twelve years later, the Dutch will play Morocco there on Monday, and Virgil Van Dijk said on Sunday he expects to see plenty of orange in the stands.
Van Dijk made the remark at a news conference inside the Monterrey stadium, saying the reception he has heard about in Mexico is not the same as the one journalists were asking him about online. He added that he is aware of the history, but still expects a good welcome and a strong atmosphere, even if he might be wrong.
The reason the subject keeps resurfacing is the match in Fortaleza, Brazil, on 29 June 2014. Mexico led through Giovani dos Santos, who scored with a left-footed strike from outside the area, before Wesley Sneijder equalized in the 88th minute. In stoppage time, Arjen Robben went down in the Mexican area, Pedro Proenca awarded a penalty, and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar converted it to send Holland through. The reaction was immediate. “No era penal” spread across social media, and the mockery went further when KLM posted “Goodbye friends!” and Gael García Bernal said on Twitter that he would never fly with that company again.
That history matters now because the visit is landing in a place where memories of that elimination still have sharp edges. Mexico has reached the round of 16 in every World Cup from 1994 through 2018, then fell in the group stage in 2022, and it will face Ecuador on Tuesday in the round of 16. Against that backdrop, FIFA said more than 20,000 Dutch fans would make the trip from Kansas City, and Ronald Koeman said the “orange bus” brings people everywhere and that many supporters are likely to wear something orange in the stadium.
The friction is hard to miss. Van Dijk says the welcome has been warm, yet the old “No era penal” chant and the recent criticism online point to the possibility that Monterrey may not feel as friendly once the match starts. Netherlands will find out on Monday whether the orange it expects in the stands belongs to travelers, locals making a point, or both.
