PKs are a lot of luck and we have NEVER had good luck here even with keepers who are better than Cillessen. No point in ragging on the keeper as he did what he could do. I doubt that none of you could have done much better. After playing 120 minutes against CR we did more than I expected in defending. Messi had ZERO chances to impact this game; doesn't that count for anything. Of course to achieve that we played without wingers and that was going to be a big risk in terms of getting quality shots on goal. Had we played a 4-3-3 we would have been at Messi's mercy in all likelihood. IMO van Gaal had the right strategy. Whether Huntelaar would have made a difference relative to van Persie is doubtful given we really could never get the ball inside at all. Celebrate what has been accomplished.
Tough way to go out. Vlaar played so well feel badly for him. Tactically the game was well played. Eliminated Messi really impressive. Not sure what to say. Van Persie was dead again.
...but it was, ultimately, a very disappointing end to what began as such a promising WC. That's just how I see it, right now. Instead of progressing and improving as the tournament moves on, we basically struggled. And in the end, our main stars weren't able to pull it off, due to (add all reasons here).
Could he have done worse than RVP. I am beyond the RVP let us down. Has been going on for a long while. Just waiting for him to hang up his boots. There are huge positives in these 2 years. A stream of quality young players have gone
...but you also have to call out Sneijder whose free kicks and corners were very poor. I think I counted only two where he delivered a decent ball. EDIT: The other thing is that there were only two serious chances on each team's goal. Higuain who shot into the side netting and Robben whose shot was deflected by Mascherano.
Make sure that you defeat Brazil ... UEFA's confed. multiplier could drop to 0.98 ... unsure but if Holland and Germany win their matches the damage will be limited (still dropping to 0.99 unless FIFA fiddles with the formula) ... UEFA needs Ws against C-BOL sides. PS maybe Brazil is still shell-shocked but they might go out there to regain some dignity too.
Yes, I thought Clasie did quite well. His passing was incisive and he was decent on defense. Janmaat slipped a couple of times on the wet turf but did well. The players who went the 120 minutes the other day were dead on their feet at the 75 minute mark.
Look at the team which LVG inherited. It was in ruins. Now we have Clasie, Stroot, Janmaat, De Vrij, Vlaar, Blind, Depay, Kongolo all potentially breaking in. Ziyech and Promes had good seasons too. Maybe Ajax will give Nouri a debut after a year. A Huge pool of talent has been created. These guys have got as much development as 2 years of Eredivisie would have given them. De Vrij was brilliant, his positioning was great for a 22 year old
Dunno - feels like a major letdown, and not one that we made it to the semis. Royally pissed, actually
Third place matches should be eliminated; they serve no purpose. We lost in 1998 because the players were deflated from their loss on guess what - PKs!!!
It's England, Portugal, Spain, Croatia, etc. ... bad results for UEFA ... you guys already did a good job but I'm hoping you can win 3rd place and keep our confed multiplier healthy.
I'm still puzzled by Van Gaal's decision in ET. All the talk of him being the best manager leading up to this game must have gone to his head. In what world does not Huntelaar not get a penalty shot when he saved our ass vs. Mexico with a PK???
Yes, there's no 'troostfinale' at the euro.. shouldn't be one at the WC either. I think it's just FIFA's way to make the sport feel more connective with other sports and to rival the Olympics??
We should have started with Krul. In tourney's every sub is so precious. We basically always in a bad situation if that sub has to happen at the end of extra time. A keeper must be able to do botyh. Krul is such a keeper. However ultimately it is Dutch shortcoming in keeper education that did this. We have not been able to produce a complete keeper like Neuer is for Germany. These kind of tourney's are the academy's of one country vs those of the other. In that sense is this loss feed back/an impulse to do better in this regard. We have to blame ourselves to max the benefit of this loss.
I think defensively the Netherlands are in good shape. Most of the defense was full of young players. Now they have very valuable experience on their side. What happened to Van Der Wiel? He's still young....
I think deep down inside why this loss hurts so much is because we were so close, and all the opponents look beatable, including Germany. And then to stumble at the finish line........eh