Yeah, I don't see why they would blame the ref either. De Jong and Van Bommel should have gotten red (dark red in De Jong's case) way before that. Holland had the chances to beat Spain, but it just didn't convert them. They tried to stop Spain by playing very un-Dutch football, but it didn't work out for them in the end. They looked like Belgium in its best days, actually.

Either way, they have had one of the easiests parcours to the final in years, maybe modern history. Denmark, Cameroon and Japan in the group stage, then Slovakia, Brazil and uruguay. Brazil clearly a top tier country, the rest...not so much.

I thought we played more like Germany used to do (and Germany a little how we used to play). Anyway, look at this squad: only Sneider and Robben are world class, and Stekelenburg almost. Playing beautiful football we wouldn't have been past the quarter finals. In the end, winning by any means necessary is the only thing that counts, nobody remembers how you won twenty years from now.

Oh, absolutely, I'm not saying you couldn't play a little physical/dirty, it's not like we ever did anything else in Belgium! Remember this?



I was just saying that it isn't much use saying the referee missed the call on the corner when the Dutch should already have been playing with 7 (field) players by then.

I saw a summary of a 1974 game last week. For all the talk of Total Football now (and foreign journalists' failure to see it hasn't been performed since 1974), that game was filled with fouls that would send Webb crying back to his momma. In recent years, the FIFA has tried to turn football into ballet, but it's still a contact sport.
And no, I don't remember that particular moment (or recognise it), but since last EC I've come to the dark side and become a football cynic, so it's all good now.

It's Kluivert's "elbow" against Staelens. Kluivert claimed afterwards that staelens called him a rapist/murderer. Dunno if that was true though (in those exact words).