Saturday's international football predictions: Danes to test experimenting Dutch

Free football tips, best bets and analysis for Saturday's international friendlies.

Where to watch

Croatia v Slovenia
Sky Sports red button, 2pm Saturday

Netherlands v Denmark
Sky Sports Premier League, 7.45pm Saturday

Best bets

Denmark or draw double chance
2pts 10-11 Betfair, Betfred

Croatia-Croatia double result
2pts 29-20 Coral

Betting preview

There are more than enough question marks over Netherlands, especially in home friendlies, to suggest the Oranje are a lay against Denmark in Amsterdam on Saturday.

The Dutch are odds-on shots in this battle of World Cup qualifying group-winners at the Johan Cruyff Arena.

And there's no doubt Louis van Gaal's men can still turn on the style when required - last autumn's crushing wins over Turkey and Montenegro are shining examples of that.

But at home in non-competitive matches they have managed to win just three of their last 12 and kept clean sheets in only two of those.

Van Gaal is also looking at tinkering with the system – trying to introduce a 5-3-2 formation – and the ex-Manchester United boss insisted the match with Denmark was put back 24 hours to Saturday to give them an extra day's training to adjust to the new set-up. That smacks of a work in progress.

The Danes are missing a couple of key defenders in Andreas Christensen and Simon Kjaer but Van Gaal, himself isolating this week after contracting Covid-19, is without Stefan de Vrij and Luuk de Jong while Donny van de Beek's form has fallen away sharply and he isn't involved.

And yesterday young defenders Jurrien Timber and Jordan Teze and PSV marksman Cody Gakpo were also ruled out through injury and haven't been replaced.

Denmark, with Brentford's former Ajax star Christian Eriksen set to make an emotional international return on the bench, are one of Europe's true improving forces after getting to the semis at the European Championship finals last summer.

Croatia and Slovenia have headed out to Qatar for a contest which the powerful Croats can win well.

Marcelo Brozovic and Sime Vrsaljko are big misses for head coach Zlatko Dalic, but he can still call upon Luka Modric, Mateo Kovacic, Mario Pasalic, Ivan Perisic and Andrej Kramaric, which is more than enough style and goal power to see off the Slovenes.

Slovenia, still without Atalanta ace Josip Ilicic, were thumped 3-0 by Croatia in Split in September and there's a feeling that Croatia can get the job done early before the obligatory glut of substitutions take the spice out of the match.

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