Despite a mediocre season, Wim Kieft has confidence: “Then we’ll play high balls.”

It may, during a mediocre season at Ajax, be called a surprise and perhaps even a mockery that national team coach Ronald Koeman has left a place in his World Cup squad open for striker Wout Weghorst. This season, the striker performed far from well and was also more preoccupied with others than with himself.

Weghorst scored only eight goals in 29 league matches last season. In addition, the striker received as many as seven yellow cards in the Eredivisie.

Nevertheless, former PSV striker Wim Kieft expresses his confidence in the tall forward, who at Euro 2024 was still clinical as a substitute in the first group match against Poland (1-2) and thus became the match-winner. Kieft lets us know this in WEEKAA Call on the podcast KieftJansenEgmondGijp.

''Why Wout is coming along, we all know. If it really has to happen, then we put Wout in and then we start playing high balls. He’ll probably do that pretty well too, because in the Dutch national team he always does that quite nicely'', says the former PSV striker.

Besides the role of battering ram, Kieft suspects that national team coach Ronald Koeman has yet another role in store for Weghorst. ''You’d better be holding everything on edge all week. That’s a bit of Wout’s job. To work well within the group and be an added value for the squad. That seems exhausting. This is anyway his last major tournament, but if he doesn’t do it'', the former international said.