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Van Persie Man of the Match

June 17th, 2008 | By: Jan | 13 Comments »

Robin scores the 2-0

Oranje started with nine new names against Romania, but never got into trouble: 2-0.
Robin van Persie was selected as Holland’s Man of the Match. “It goes to show, with nine new players we beat Romania. The team that Italy and France couldn’t sweep aside. You can’t call this team a B-team, can you?”

The Arsenal striker, coming on to the pitch against Italy and France, played a whole match and was at times unstoppable. “I am not that happy with my own performance. This wasn’t my best game ever. Lots of things went wrong. In the second half, they opened up a bit and after the 1-0 we started to play better.”

The spectacular moments were the one where he picked Heitinga’s pass out of thin air to strike from the turn. Lobont stopped that attempt. “That should have been a goal. My defender was gone, I had some time even and I should have scored.” Another moment was the De Zeeuw long ball that Van Persie controlled and this time he did score.

Van Persie played behind Huntelaar, centrally on midfield, and Afellay took the wing this time. Whether his performance was good enough to grab a starting position in the quarter finals is a big question. For him as well.

This game, for the violin of the cat as we say in Holland (meaning that it didn’t matter result-wise), was a great match for players coming back from injury, like Robben and Van Persie.

The supporting role for Van Persie was to expected, but that Arjen Robben would miss the start – and therefore his starting position – was a huge blow for the Madrid winger. Two days before the first day he got injured again. The vulnerable snakeman couldn’t hold back his tears.

But, the new Arjen Robben didn’t take too much time to cry about it. He immediately fought himself back to fitness. He feels stronger and more healthy than ever.

Robben wasn’t great against Romania and he missed a very rare chance in the first half, after a smart Huntelaar flick. Still, some people think that Van Basten will use Robben in the quarter finals. Van Persie, meticulously supported in his recovery, might have to wait until the semis or finals (if Oranje gets there: knock on wood) for his starting position. Van Basten already stated that he is willing to play Sneijder as holding midfielder while Raf van der Vaart has shown he can play there as well. But in order to play both Robben and Van Persie, another sacrifice will have to be made…

Van Persie has repeatedly said he’ll respect any decision by Van Basten. “It’s not about me. What we achieved now, is only part of the journey. We want to finish this!”

Tags: Group C

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Comments

By Bart | June 17th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Why weren’t they wearing the white shorts and blue socks in this game?

Posted from Canada

By Carlos | June 17th, 2008 at 9:42 pm

Hi Bart
Uefa tells the teams what to wear, simple as that ! They knew this last week already. Remember the WC? Holland was not allowed to wear the white shorts on various occasions. Makes it easier to distinguish. As a player I used to hate it when our shirts/shorts were close to the teams we’re playing against due to the split second peripheral vision players rely on.
If you notice Man U, they NEVER wear anything that may be similar to what the opposition wears, be it socks/shorts/shirts.

Posted from Singapore

By Rob | June 17th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

I thought Bouma was man of the match personally, or indeed any of the defence, they barely gave Romania a sniff. I’d love Marco to drop Ooijer and Mathijsen in favour of Heetinga and Bouma, but I know he won’t.

Posted from Japan

By van | June 18th, 2008 at 12:42 am

woory about rvp. he play well in the middle. but can he be the same position on saturday? the man of the match scored two goals while vdv was nill. how can we deal with the 3 in 4231 ?

Posted from China

By Rob | June 18th, 2008 at 12:47 am

Van Persie shouldn’t start – I love him, but he wasn’t at his sharpest for a fair bit of the match in terms of passing play, though he showed flickers of brilliance.

Posted from Japan

By Cretzu | June 18th, 2008 at 3:27 am

Thanks to dutch people…you let us win, but we were too stupid…good luck to the final…

Posted from Romania

By julien | June 18th, 2008 at 7:35 am

Well nice job finishing off the Italians. So if you see Italy again and lose then what? You guys should have at least taken your foot off the gas pedal a little bit. That isn’t throwing the match. Instead you score 2 goals lol. It seemed like the Oranje were really trying to win. I guarantee you that if the Italians or French were in that position they would have relaxed. Well maybe not France. Domenech would try to lose and France would end up winning because he would play the good players that he never plays (Trézéguet, etc.).

Posted from United States

By Matthew | June 18th, 2008 at 7:45 am

Van Persie is going to be the best player in the world. I just hope he won’t get any more injuries.

By GD | June 18th, 2008 at 7:48 am

julien

This IS us taking our foot off the pedal a little bit. It’s Romania’s fault for not achieving a single goal against our “second string”.

Frankly, I don’t see how Italy can beat Spain. Italy really isn’t playing well at all. Their game with France became a farce the moment that ribery guy left the field. Ugly game, ugly play.

By Caleb | June 18th, 2008 at 9:12 am

Julien – I agree with GD, that was us taking our foot off the pedal… too bad the Romanians didn’t know what to do with it… imagine if we had been playing like the game meant something?

Posted from Canada

By bobotoh | June 18th, 2008 at 9:36 am

OOT, Andrea Pirlo is suspended for the match against Spain. About Holland, I think now Basten must choice between VdV and RvP.

Posted from Indonesia

By Igor | June 18th, 2008 at 11:23 am

the choice is obvious really, start with the XI that won against france and italy, that team has balance, cohesion and momentum (if anything lets play Heitinga on Defense but no other changes). Robben and van Persie have both been very good as subs. and personally i think that so far van der Vaart’s passing has been superior to van Persie’s and that really is the main role of the man playing behind the striker.

Posted from Canada

By Sol | June 18th, 2008 at 11:43 am

Besides that, being able to use a fresh Robben and van Persie when your opponent is more tired in the second halve is much more efficient. As we’ve seen against France in particular.

Posted from Netherlands