Van Dijk Sits, De Jong Returns — Greece Can Take the Group in Amsterdam Tonight

Group A2 has run out of room to hide. The Netherlands and Greece walk out at the Johan Cruijff ArenA tonight (19:45 GMT) level on eight points, level on goal difference, both unbeaten through four games — separated only by the two extra goals the Dutch have scored. The winner takes the group lead and the head-to-head into Monday's final round; depending on Germany's result in Serbia, the winner could be in the Nations League quarter-finals by midnight. The fixture is on its Game Center page, and the two squads are laid out side by side on the matchup comparison.

The captain-shaped hole

The Netherlands have to do it without the man who has organised them for years. Virgil van Dijk did not come back fit from Sunday's 3-1 win at Crystal Palace — a game he finished, as he has finished every Premier League minute of Liverpool's season — and the Dutch federation withdrew him on Monday. Liverpool set out his state in the desk's report this week: a calf problem carried quietly since last month, no diagnosis offered, Anfield on November 22 the date everything points at. Sunderland's Brian Brobbey went home the same day, and Liverpool's Ryan Gravenberch and Kenneth Taylor are out too.

What is left is a back four built almost entirely out of Premier League squads. The Dutch previews split on the arrangement — Voetbal International puts Arsenal's Jurriën Timber at right-back, Sports Mole starts him inside — but they agree on the names: Brighton's Bart Verbruggen in goal, Brighton's Jan Paul van Hecke in the middle, Tottenham's Micky van de Ven beside or outside him, with Inter's Denzel Dumfries and Aston Villa's Ian Maatsen in the argument at full-back. Greece's front line — Fotis Ioannidis, Vangelis Pavlidis, and Como's Tasos Douvikas, who scored a Champions League hat-trick this month — gets to test the rebuild for ninety minutes.

And if the rebuild needs a spare part, it is a 24-year-old from Brentford. Sepp van den Berg was called up on Tuesday for his first senior squad — a day after the federation had said no replacements would be called at all. Van den Berg is a former Liverpool defender with eight under-21 caps, back fit this autumn after the groin surgery that cost him the start of Brentford's season. A debut tonight would come in a group decider, in front of a home crowd, against the most confident young side in the competition.

De Jong takes the armband

The counterweight walks back in at the other end of the team. Frenkie de Jong plays his first Netherlands game since the World Cup tonight. A knee injury kept him out of all four group matches; he watched the eight points arrive on television and said this week he could see Xavi's patterns from his sofa — "you could clearly see what they had worked on in training and what had been discussed." He knows the coach better than anyone in the squad: 107 matches under Xavi at Barcelona, where he has just passed 300 appearances.

With Van Dijk absent, De Jong captains the side. He has thought about what that should not look like. "I shouldn't suddenly start directing people the way Virgil does, because it wouldn't have the same impact," he told Voetbalzone. "We'll lose that and we'll certainly miss it, because he's our captain and leader." The probable line-ups put him straight back into the middle, next to Joey Veerman and Tijjani Reijnders — the man whose 89th-minute volley saved the Dutch in Greece.

Thessaloniki is the warning

That night is why nobody in Amsterdam is treating Greece as a pleasant surprise anymore. On October 1 at the Toumba, Greece were 2-0 up by half-time: Ioannidis finishing a counterattack on 23 minutes, then squaring for Giorgos Masouras just before the break after Ruben van Bommel's careless back-pass. Xavi called the first half "my fault," made three changes and switched shape. Van Dijk headed in Veerman's corner on 59 minutes, Denzel Dumfries had two finishes ruled offside, and Reijnders volleyed the equaliser with a minute left. Van Dijk's verdict afterwards was blunt — "unacceptable… it just wasn't good enough in the first half."

Greece are not here by accident

Greece were promoted from League B last cycle and have not lost a game at this level. They opened by winning in Serbia — 2-1, Douvikas' stoppage-time winner after they had trailed — and then 1-0 in Germany, before the two home draws. Jürgen Klopp, whose Germany side lost that second game, praised the depth of their young squad and wondered aloud whether it could become a golden generation. West Ham's site, noting Dinos Mavropanos' call-up, put the arithmetic plainly: four points from Greece's last two games — Amsterdam tonight, Serbia at home in Volos on Monday — and they are in the quarter-finals whatever anyone else does.

Mavropanos has started all four of Greece's games and anchors the defence again, with Liverpool's Kostas Tsimikas at left-back. Two starters are missing: Christos Zafeiris and Manolis Saliakas both serve one-match bans after second bookings against Germany, and Saliakas' absence opens the right-back spot. In attack, Sports Mole flags a Premier League pair — Christos Tzolis and Charalampos Kostoulas — among the options behind the front man.

So the group gets its answer in the right order. Tonight decides who leads it; Monday — the Dutch in Berlin, Greece at home to Serbia — decides who follows the leader into March. The Netherlands have the crowd, the deeper squad and the returning captain-in-waiting. Greece have the receipt from Thessaloniki and six weeks of evidence that the receipt was not a fluke. What the Dutch no longer have is the defender who has bailed them out of exactly this kind of night before.