Nederlands 1 - Australia 1
Hot last sunday afternoon here in Rotterdam’s stadium, when Oranges met the Aussies. Not technically a superb game, but the skilled Dutch and the tenacious Australian entertained pretty much. It will be a pleasure to see them playing ‘for real’ during the WC.
The astonishing part, anyway, was the stadium itself: completely orange, everywhere!!!
To see the pics
June 7th, 2006 at 6:52 am
Ahhhhh, One could really see that the Australians descend from criminals. The lack of skill was compensated by kicking, holding and a clear handsball in the area. The dutch went off the pitch with three injured players whereas the Aussies went off with only one red card. I mean: come on it’s a friendly game, don’t break any bones, save that for when you’re playing the Mannschaft!
June 7th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Bloody winging Dutch. If you can’t handle the heat, don’t go near the fire. And if you cant beat the team ranked #42 in the world, when you have 11 players against 10 for 30 minutes of the match, what hope do you really have of taking the cup? There are many styles to playing football, and one of them is to use your size to keep the ball / move others off their ball.
Peter Geelhoed, you should know about this… Sure the Dutch play technically well, with a lot more skill, but technical skill is NOT the only aspect of football.
Lets face it, only one of the Dutch players was injured as a result of a penalised action, the other two were just unlucky. You say we made a handball, well what about the player litterally pulling Viduka to the ground from behind when he was going to make a shot?
It is unfortunate that there was injuries, but this is one of the last matches before the world cup for both teams. That is already time to take it seriously. Sorry for everyone that was prediciting Netherlands 3-0 or 4-0, the Australian team came out to win that game, not just to run around the park for 2 hours. You can be sure that your world cup opponents will be doing the same.
Peter M.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Viduka got the penalty didn’t he?
But you’re right, the dutch will probably take a lot of hits from the other teams as they become frustrated by the 70% ball posession that the dutch seem to be able to pull off. We’ll see some yellow (and red) cards.
I hope they will handle it like they did in 74 against the Argentinians and Brasilians. Playing against 10 is not always an advantage, as the opponents will compact their playing field. The dutch have now learned that against the Aussies and will do better against the Serbs.
June 7th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
The Dutch do play with a large amount of ball possession, and it is very successful, but to say that we started putting hits on the Dutch because of our frustration is stupid. We deliberately used our strength and size to our advantage to win the ball, and not illegally either. At the end of the game the Dutch committed 13 fouls, the Australian team 10. So who was playing dirty? The fact is that challenging for the ball is a perfectly acceptable tactic in football. What do you expect, that other teams shouldn’t challenge the Dutch players for the ball and let them run around and do what they like? There was only one really bad tackle in the match, which was unfortunate, but our player got sent off for it, so wtf are you complaining about?
If you want to talk about something that is illegal, what about the number of dives the Dutch players took, often when they had been completely missed? You would have thought they they had all gone to acting classes as preparation for the match or something.
Peter M.