Sneijder’s Ankle Not Too Bad

photo: File Image | AFP

Wednes­day, Sept. 9, 2009 — Nether­lands 1: 0 Scot­land today at Ham­p­den Park (here’s the minute-by-minute report).

As George Bur­ley said, Scot­land deserved at least some­thing from the match at home in which they threat­ened the wood­work seri­ally. The dif­fi­cult loss ends Scotland’s chance of qual­i­fy­ing for South Africa’s pageant next summer.

I saw Wes­ley Snei­jder in ice mak­ing his way to the club-house. Today he was replaced in the 77th minute by Rafeal van der Vaart.

Inter needn’t worry over­much about his ice-taped right ankle. Report­edly in Eschede last week, he was stretchered off after scor­ing in what became the Nether­lands’ 3-nil thrash­ing of Japan. X-rays proved the knock was not as bad as it looked and not severe enough to keep him out of the Dutch side today in Glasgow.

If any­one has a feed from today’s match, I’m sure many will enjoy this one in which Scot­land will have felt the urgent need for a result, albeit with­out the inspi­ra­tional James McFadden.

Tagged as: Holland, Inter Milan, Scotland, Wesley Sneijder