Cody Gakpo looked pretty surprised, and a smile spread across his face.He’d just been told that the two goals he’d scored in the Netherlands 5-1 thrashing of Sweden in Houston had taken him just one behind Marco van Basten’s tally for the Dutch national team.He’s also closing in on the most goals ever scored at major tournaments for the Netherlands: he’s on eight now, behind only Robin van Persie on nine and Dennis Bergkamp with ten.Van Basten. Van Persie. Bergkamp. You’d probably smile quite broadly, too, if you were being bracketed with players like that.That’s the Gakpo that wears orange, though. The Gakpo who wears red often looks like a completely different player.It’s not that Gakpo stood out as bad for Arne Slot’s side last season. They were a dysfunctional team for much of the campaign as Slot tried to figure out how to fit an expensive group of attackers together. Gakpo felt peripheral: not in how often he played (he started every Premier League game he was fit for), but in how he played. He didn’t impact games in the same way he had in the past: he scored nine goals as opposed to 18 in their title-winning season under Slot. Sometimes he looked almost frightened to shoot, confidence low and as a result, not nearly as effective as before.Gakpo struggled at times for Liverpool last season (Getty Images)For the Dutch, though, he is crucial. Against Sweden, he was their most dangerous attacking threat by far, his directness causing problems both on the flank and cutting inside. From the flank, he laid on Brian Brobbey’s opening goal — “That first goal had everything you could want,” Ronald Koeman told Dutch TV after the game. For the second, he cut inside, scoring his second to put the Netherlands 4-0 up with a strong low shot just inside the near post.“It’s a little bit different, how I play here,” he said after the game, when asked by The Athletic to compare his roles for club and country. “It’s different where the coach wants me to play, the freedom I have than at Liverpool.”It could be that Gakpo feels like a bigger part of the Dutch team than he does at Liverpool. At Euro 2024, Ronald Koeman described him as his team’s top player and encouraged the rest of his squad to reach Gakpo’s levels. At Liverpool, he’s been a few rungs further down the ladder, in the shadow of Mohamed Salah and others, and at times last season it felt like he was just keeping Rio Ngmouha’s spot warm on the left flank.World Cup's craziest jerseysYou only have to look at Liverpool’s transfer business this summer to see that they’re probably not counting on him starting every game under Andoni Iraola next season: Victor Munoz has arrived, and they’re chasing Yan Diomande too. Those players can play on the right and ultimately might be Salah replacements, but they’ve both played most of their football on the left so far. Throw in the development of Ngmouha, and you’ve suddenly got some pretty crowded flanks at Anfield.The Dutch couldn’t be happier with him, though, it seems. “He’s an outstanding footballer,” said Gakpo’s skipper for both club and country, Virgil van Dijk. “He works so hard for the team. He’s disciplined; his quality stands out. His assists, crosses, goals, he’s very important for us, and we want him to stay that way.”Granted, the Netherlands were facing a Sweden team that didn’t provide much resistance, in the early phases of the game at least. The Dutch tore them apart in the first 20 minutes, Brobbey scoring two quite similar goals and they could’ve had more. It forced Graham Potter into a tactical switch, moving from a back three to a back four, and it worked for a while, but after half-time, they ran in another three. Throughout, the constant and their most potent threat going forward was Gakpo.“Today there was more variation in the attacking play, more movement,” said Gakpo, “it was maybe more difficult for the defenders to mark us and we became free in the box. That was the little thing we maybe missed against Japan.”Before the game, Koeman had reflected on the substitutions he made in their opener against Japan, saying he took “responsibility” for how those didn’t work out in a game in which the Dutch lost the lead twice. He got things very right in this game, making the reasonably big call to drop Crysenscio Summerville, bring in Brobbey and move Donyell Malan to the wing. Then at half-time, Summerville came on and opened the Swedish defence within a couple of minutes, allowing Denzel Dumfries to set up Gakpo for his first, and the West Ham winger scored himself towards the end of the game.Koeman dropped Summerville from the start, but he scored from the bench (Lars Baron/Getty Images)One thing that emphasised is that the Dutch have a range of attacking options, without there necessarily being a standout superstar. “We have a lot of different qualities in the team,” Gakpo said. “Speed, strong hold-up play, Memphis came on and showed his quality. We also have on the bench Justin Kluivert and Wout Weghorst who have different qualities. It’s important to have a lot of options in the squad.”Perhaps that’s one of their strengths, an attacking unit with a lot of different options and moving parts, but one that can provide a different threat depending on who they face. Players can slot in and move out, players can switch positions and perform different roles, as they did in this game.But one spot is fixed. For the Netherlands, Cody Gakpo isn’t going anywhere.