Ruud: super-satisfied despite not scoring

I really noticed Ruud’s new role in the Italy and especially the France game. He didn’t play quite as deep as he normally does and he was great at holding up the ball for the mids, and wingers especially. Several times he made runs to the wing in order to hold up the ball and maintain possession while waiting for a run from the midfield. He did so well at it too. He was everywhere!! A really great game from him and a magical ’semi-assist’ for Van Persie’s goal.

The Oranje should try to be more careful and tight on defense.

Posted from  United States

oranje should not play more careful, our strength is attack. Why go play defense?
That is the spirit of Oranje.. 1-0 against France and then substituting Engelaar for Robben. A defensive midfielder for an attacker.

That is oranje.

Posted from  Netherlands

Hi
What do u think, Sneijder will play against Romania? I need to know if i put him in my team on uefa pls

I think what Julien means is that we should be careful in defence, not become more defensive minded. Against France we did have a few close call due to slack marking or sub-par defence.

Sweet: I think that he will play a part in the match but probably not the whole game. Maybe 45 minutes or less. I’m really hoping that Huntelaar plays. It will be his first appearance in the finals of a major senior tournament.

Is Huntelaar fit yet? Last I heard he and Melchiot were still not ready to play.

Posted from  Netherlands

@migloigle; yes Huntelaar is fit (and my guess is he will play v Rumania) he did miss the buss back to the hotel though! haha

think our defenvense is fine; Ooijer and Boula played great the other day, Mathijsen seems to have found back his confidence and we have a worldclass goalie…im not too worried

Posted from  Netherlands

Well, I worry about the defense against very quick and small players like the spanish ones or against very technical ones like Ibrahimovic.
But they have so much trust in themselves now.
Do you know if Heitinga will leave Ajax ?

Posted from  France

He’s already left Ajax for Atletico Madrid.

Posted from  Netherlands

Anyone just watch the Czech Turkey game? Wow, that was quite a game. I was going for the Czechs so I was disappointed, but that was some comeback! Unlucky for the Czechs and Cech…

True Caleb, the second goal (the first one by Nihat) was a blunder by the great Petr Cech. I felt he should have blocked Arda turan’s shot also. But you have to say the Turks showed great character and mental strength. They seized the initiative when it mattered most. Twice (against Swiss and the Czechs) they came back from behind and won. The young Arda Turan seems to have a brilliant future ahead of him. Koller might be ruing his left-footed miss, when he had just Volkan to beat. also it might be the end of the road for the venerable Czech coach Karel Bruckner.
This half of the draw is turning out to be a true blockbuster. Swiss today upstaged a second string Portugal with a 2-0 victory. If the Germans meet Portuguese in the pre-quarters, well one of he red-hot favorites would have to go home earlier than expected.
BTW if the Germans sink Austria with a barrage of goals and Don Leo’s Poland pulls off an upset win against Croatia, will Germany not regain the top position in the group? the TV channels were showing that Croatia would meet Turkey and Germany would meet Portugal. Unless I am missing something very obvious will the goal difference not be the pimary factor in deciding who goes to the quarters?

I wasn’t much impressed by the Czechs–they look slow–but would have advanced anyway except for the huge mistake by their keeper. I certainly want to see portugal and germany play!

Prabal, first tiebreaker is head to head so Croatia is already thru as top seed b/c they beat Germany.

Posted from  United States

seeing portugal reserve lose to the swiss, same thing might happen to the dutch

Posted from  United States

RvN did play awesome in both games. I think there’s something extra dangerous about a world class striker like RvN supporting the others while he can. That makes him unpredictable. If he just did his striker thing then the opposite defence is always more prepared to face him than when he switches it up with nice passes or simply holding the ball to create space. A flexible striker is a more dangerous striker in the long run IMO. And RvN has visibly made the Netherlands more lethal even when he’s not the one scoring.

Prabal – Dave’s got it right, head to head is the first tie breaker, so since Croatia beat Germany they are always going to end up ahead of them.

Michel-Olivier – I don’t think the same thing will happen to our reserves. We have so much quality on the bench that I think we will still do well against the Romanians. I wonder who is going to sit the Romania game out though…

Hup Hup Holland –beat Romania for us Italians.. I will be cheering on for you, I hope robbie van pierse is starting as I have read, are any of you aware of your starting lineup on tuesday??

No, we usually hear that on the day of the match, Marco said he would probably keep the players with yellow cards on the bench, but Robben for instance could play, because he is fit and the fact that he gets hurt easily (no clue how to translate ‘blessuregevoelig’ in english better) is not an argument not to let him play.

Posted from  Netherlands

Ha Jan – Almost agree….
Stekelenberg i/o Timmer
de Cler i/o Mathijsen (Bouma central)

Let’s see

Posted from  Singapore

May Oranje win!!
Iam from a cricketing nation (India) and do not know why I want to support Netherland, but that’s what I always do. In world cup there are two favourite team of mine Netherland and Argentina.
Oranje has lived to my expectation and more then that, the team rocks!!
The way they beated Italy and France is un believable, Netherland beated them as if they were playing against local club team from Italy and France!!
I love to see all the strikers of Netherland namely Van Nistelrooy, Kuyt, Persie, Sneijder, Robben, and also Van der sar.I hope that they keep pumping the goals!! Thanks to them for treating us with the display of wonderful football.

Hope Netherland cricket team doesn’t reaches to this level

Posted from  India

I actually heard that the Dutch cricket team has an up and coming young batsmen who played in the last cricket world cup. He was 17 at the time i believe and was the Dutch opener. He posted a few respectable scores if i remember correctly… maybe a half century?! The rest of the team are pretty average though…. i suppose it’s due to the small number of players in The Netherlands and the lack of intereste in the game.

Lets pop some pints of Heineken and Oranjeboom and enjoy Total Football. I hope Oranje don’t throw this game to Roumanie enabling my other team France to progress. I just want a good game, thats all

Posted from  United States

We should let romania win. I hate to say this but i really think that holland will loose in the semi’s. Even a French sport journalist said that Holland would be really crazy to beat Romania. Because when we meet Italy or France it won’t happen again. I really think that France and Italy are playing mindgames with Holland. And everybody’s is fallen for it. These countries keep on sayin they hope Holland play fair. They just say this because they want everybody to keep an eye on Holland to play fair an Holland offcourse is going to risk a few players for this. Becaus we don’t want others to think otherwise. I hope i’m wrong but Holland always have something going bad in the semi’s or quarterfinals.

Posted from  Netherlands

good morning nistlroy

Posted from  Yemen