Newcastle United defender Sven Botman has been handed a call-up to the national team by manager of the Netherlands national team, Ronald Koeman. He will be part of the Flying Dutchmen’s squad for their next set of Euro 2024 qualifiers.
In those games, the Netherlands will face off against France on March 24 and Gibraltar on March 27.
Botman was perhaps unfortunate to have missed out on the Dutch squad for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. However, with his unwaveringly excellent performances for Newcastle this season, he completely merits his call-up.
The towering centre-half has yet to make an international appearance for the Netherlands. He has been called up to the squad in the past, for a series of friendlies back in 2021, but didn’t play in any of the games.
He has made plenty of appearances for the Netherlands’ U21 squad – seven in total, scoring a solitary goal.
Botman has been nothing short of outstanding for Newcastle United during the current campaign. With Fabian Schar at his side, the pair have formed a formidable centre-back partnership.
Botman has made 23 appearances in the Premier League for the Magpies so far this season – while he hasn’t scored a goal or registered any assists, the difference he has made at the back is startling. No team has conceded fewer goals than the Toon in the Premier League this season – they have let in just 18 across 25 games.
Unfortunately, Botman was responsible for a mistake which led to Nottingham Forest going ahead 1-0 against the run of play in the Friday night PL fixture at the City ground, but the error did not affect the performance of the Dutchman or his team mates.
United equalised before the end of the 1st half via an excellent improvised strike from Alexander Isaac and then in 2nd half injury time, Isaac stepped up to dispatch a penalty into the Forest goal beating Keylor Navas and sending traveling Geordie fans into raptures as the team go into the international break off the back of two wins.
The wins leave them in 5th place only two points behind Spurs in 4th (with a game in hand) plus they are only 3 points behind Man United (sitting in 3rd) who face each other in the first game back after the international break having played the same number of PL games.
Newcastle are basically looking very good with a +20 goal difference whereas Man United only have a +6 goal difference as a result of the hammerings they have taken from Brentford, Brighton and most recently Liverpool.
Eddie Howe’s club look like they are returning to form at just the right time to really challenge Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur for the top 4 and given their rock-solid defence and the fact that striker Alexander Isaac is fit and scoring goals Newcastle United have as good chance as anyone as qualifying for the Champions League.