I guess Holland lost the coin toss, and had to wear the day-glo orange uniforms, while Cote d'Ivoire got to wear something tasteful, even though they looked better in their orange uniforms than the Dutch. (No offense intended to the Dutch and Ivorian fans, Lisa Ann's bag of oranges, or Lindsay Lohan's orange pussy.)
Didier Drogba put his signature on the game, with an uncalled handball, a yellow card for kicking Dutch keeper Edwin Van der Sar on the ground, and generally being a stupid ballhog ((c) 2006 Arjen Robben, all rights reserved). Because of the card, his World Cup is already over, since he'll be missing the Serbia game on Wednesday. Best Drogba ballhog moment: 42nd minute, Drogba gets a clear breakaway and has Arouna Kone streaking downfield on the right side, with only Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Van der Sar in goal ahead of them. Drogba has his head down heading for the goal when he spots van Bronckhorst hauling ass trying to get to him. He clearly decides he's going to beat GvB himself because he doesn't make the obvious pass into space ahead of Kone. When karma asserts itself and GvB catches him, Drogba's pass is blocked by GvB and Cote d'Ivoire blow an easy chance to tie up the game.
Cote d'Ivoire did score earlier when Johnny Heitinga couldn't keep up with Bakary Kone dribbling across the top of the box (exhibit one in the case for Johnny Heitinga being a worthless stiff) and so gave up and figured somebody else would chase him, but in a rare moment of defensive befuddlement, Kone got free of everybody long enough to set himself up for a shot, and by the time anybody closed it was too late. Cote d'Ivoire did create some serious danger for Holland at several more points in the game, with some shaky defending, requiring things like Robin van Persie running back into goal and chesting a ball off the line when Van der Sar's defense hung him out to dry trying to clear the aftermath of a corner kick in the 77th minute.
The Dutch goals showed some cause for alarm, the first coming in the 23rd minute when Robin van Persie at the top right corner of the penalty box looks up for Heitinga running into the box, but has to hold the ball up because Heitinga is offside. Heitinga gives this frustrated shrug and stands there offside like a moron (exhibit two) so RvP tries to dribble through traffic and gets brought down hard. RvP hits the resulting free kick like he shot it out of a cannon around the wall and past the keeper who doesn't react until it's already too late. Van Persie kicked ass all around today, actually.
The second Dutch goal was set up by the individual creativity of Arjen Robben drawing the whole defense to him, and what I presume was the Foot of God reaching down into Robben and making him pass the ball, something which obviously wouldn't have happened otherwise. He passed it to Ruud van Kneestillsore, who was well behind the only defenders near him and Robben, but played onside by Kone way on the other side of the field. Other than that bit of luck, RvN is offside on that goal, and I could be wrong but I doubt he was looking over at Kone to judge if he was onside or not. In other words both goals featured a big dumbass standing offside. To say nothing of Robben, when he got into trouble and the defenders were all on him, passing to Johnny Heitinga who promptly made a one-touch pass right back to Robben who had like 4 guys around him (exhibit 3). Robben dribbled out of it and then made the pass to the offside Van Kneestillsore so it all worked out in the end, but what the hell was that pass? I did that once in a game, taking a pass back from midfield from Declan Mumford and then unhelpfully passing it right back to him... he didn't say anything but I think his expression might have conveyed, "Do you think this may be why nobody ever passes to you?"
Actually it may have been Marco van Bommel (in the situation with Robben, there was only one Dutch player on my high school team and he wasn't an international). Anyways, I still say Heitinga was still making a lot of boneheaded moves, and obviously Marco van Basten agreed because he didn't play the second half. Not that his replacement, Khalid Boulahrouz, didn't make his fair share of boneheaded moves. The best boneheaded move though came in like in the final seconds when the ref was looking at his watch and any clearance by Holland would mean the end of the game, and Van Bommel dicks around by the sideline instead of clearing the ball, loses it and has to foul and give up a free kick in a dangerous area, up one goal with seconds to go. Fortunately the kick went nowhere near the goal, but Holland is really looking at much tougher opposition from here on out.
Hopefully Robben has seen the value of passing, from his assist or from Drogba's cautionary example, or Marc Overmars or Boudewijn Zenden will have to get on a plane. Okay, Van der Vaart or somebody would probably come in, but I prefer the solution of tracking down Marc Overmars off cooking pancakes somewhere and slapping some cleats on him. I would also hope that the Dutch players would stop training for the Oliver Neuville Charity Offside Race being held after the tournament and start looking at the last defender. They may need some serious scoring to keep up with Argentina.
On a positive note, the most successful Oranje coach since Rinus Michels in the 80s was Guus Hiddink for getting a bitterly fractured team to come together and make a very serious challenge for the World Cup in 1998. Marco van Basten has definitely got one thing down, and that's the Guus Hiddink permanent scowl. All you get when you score a goal for this team is the scowl with a thumbs-up. That scowl took teams to the semis in the previous two World Cups, and there can't be an Australia-Netherlands scowl on scowl match-up until at least the semis, and probably the final, so I think things are looking good.
Holland* 2-1 Cote d'Ivoire
'23 Van Persie
'27 Van Kneestillsore
'38 B. Kone
*-Calling the Netherlands "Holland" could be considered an example of synecdoche (a form of figurative language), and therefore aesthetic rather than ignorant, when made on the basis of the flow of prose. READ A BOOK.
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