Malta U-17 side suffered their second successive defeat in the UEFA Championship qualifiers when they went down to the Netherlands 1-0 in Jakovo, Serbia, yesterday.
After Friday’s frustrating 1-0 defeat to hosts Serbia, which saw the Maltese producing the better fare only to concede a late goal, Sergio Soldano’s boys looked to produce another commendable showing against the superior Dutch.
The Maltese started brightly and Miles Beerman and Aidan Friggieri both had good scoring opportunities but failed to hit the target.
Instead it was the Netherlands who grabbed the all-important goal on 22 minutes when Shurendo Janga diverted the ball past Malta goalkeeper Timmy Aquilina.
From then on, the Dutch took control of proceedings and created several scoring opportunities but could not breach Aquilina’s goal for a second time.
With this win the Netherlands are sharing top spot in the group with Serbia on six points after the latter had the better of Finland 1-0.
Malta will end their commitments in Serbia on Wednesday when they play Finland at Jakovo.