Rafael: I thought, what the f… is happening?

Man of the Match according to the UEFA. The BBC chose Van the Man…

With growing surprise Rafael van der Vaart witness Oranje play Italy off the pitch. “At one stage, they seemed like they couldn’t stand it any longer. I remember thinking, what the hell is happening? We are going to kick their asses!”

He admitted he never felt like this. “It was special. Very special. In particular the second goal. And anything we tried worked, we had a lot of great opportunities.”

Raf was one of the two co-directors, with mate Sneijder. “I was never this tired after a match, but we proved we can play together and we proved Oranje can impress with this system.”

Experts always said Raf and Wes couldn’t play together. Too adventurous, too frivolous. For now, they’ve been given star-status. That’s how it works in the opportunistic jungle called football. Sneijder, realistically: “Now we can enjoy this for a day, but then we need to focus on France and on repeating our performance.”

Dennis Bergkamp said before this tournament, that Oranje could come far. “If it gels, if it flows, these guys can do anything and beat any team. We do need more consistency, but once they control that, anything is possible.”

And it showed, against Italy. Ruud van Nistelrooy: “It’s unbelievable how much Wesley has developed in his season in Madrid.”

Raf van der Vaart is still a HSV player. It’s very likely that a big club will pick him up after the EC.
“We’ll see. I’m not focused on that. If it happens, great. If not, I don’t mind. It’s not a punishment to stay at HSV. But now, it’s Oranje. And we just did something remarkable: we gave the world champs a beating. And that’s wonderful, but…the next opponent waits. The runner up on the WC.”

Sneijder: “I knew we could make it hard for Italy. After 15 minutes I knew we would be the victors.”

Van der Vaart: “For me it wasn’t a surprise that our qualities come to the fore against strong opponents. Italy didn’t want to hide and that also helped us play our game. I know the fans and critics were skeptic about our games. This was a good opportunity to show what we are able to do.”