Tisteon Simeonus, on 13 June 2014 - 11:38 PM, said:
Considering the quality on the Spanish side their performance - especially the defence and especially in the second half - was utterly shoddy. Not to take anything away from Netherlands who played stupendous football and at least 3 of the 5 goals were stonking good ones, but that was not at all what I expected from Spain! This World Cup is shaping up to be a flipping good one! Goals, controversies, upsets & surprises, and that is after 4 games...
Here's just hoping the England game tomorrow isn't deathly boring.
The Spain defense wasn't actually that bad - apart from Casillas getting embarrassed by the last Robben goal that was set up with a long pass right through the middle. The Dutch forwards were absolutely world class today and got great balls put into them fast enough that the Spanish couldn't recover from their pressing ways in time.
The Spanish gave up the sidelines by putting David Silva on the right wing (he always goes in the middle and makes right to left runs all the way to the other side of the field) and Holland used that to give Blind looots of time to give absolute beauties of crosses to Robben and Van Persie or have Sneidjer work the ball around a bit.
Seriously, there may not be a better cross this world cup than the one he hit to Van Persie. It was perfectly weighted - just ahead of Casilla's "go out and get it" range, just behind the defense of Ramos/Pique and at the perfect height for Van Persie to one touch. It was an extraordinary kick and Van Persie honored it with a stellar heading lob.
Blind hit another great one for Robben later on and then again and again got the ball out to the forwards as fast as possible. Things were just firing for Holland in a way that's exceptionally rare. If those two teams play again 10 times, I strongly doubt the Dutch reach that level of a shellacking of Spain. Everything went right for them today - apart from the poor penalty call. The David Silva saved lob went their way and so on.
Edit: When the Spanish subs came on, Fabregas stayed much farther out to the right and Pedro made sure to pin back the Dutch defenders too. However, they took off Xabi and told the midfielders to get more aggressive going forwards, which made the long pass sliced through the middle possible for Robben's second goal. That's a sign that the Dutch absolutely won the tactical battle and that Blind may be underscouted or performing much better than most everybody expected.
This post has been edited by amphibian: 14 June 2014 - 12:44 AM
I survived the Permian and all I got was this t-shirt.