Futbol: Netherlands v. Australia
Well it's possible that I blog a lot about the World Cup or it's possible that I completely neglect to... I think it'll be closer to the latter than the former because I'm sometimes quite lazy, but we shall see...Nevertheless, the Netherlands v. Australia friendly tonight was quite interesting. I expected us to be competitive but I still expected the Dutch to win by 2 goals at least. What ensued was quite surprising.
The first half was a Dutch white-wash in terms of possession and shots on goal, but it only produced one goal for the Dutch (in the 9th minute, Van Nistelrooy pouncing on a loose ball in the box). This lack of results is pretty much due to Mark Schwarzer's heroics in goal, he pulled off some fantastic saves and has surely cemented his spot as first choice for the game against Japan (poor Kalac).
Australia was disappointing in the first half, the gap between us and the Dutch in terms of technical ability and pace was evident. Our passing sucked, we gave the Dutch too much space on the ball and we were repeatedly exposed on the flanks by the pace of Robben and Van Persie.
The second half showed a marked improvement. After Viduka was dragged down in the box (his strength on the ball created a few good opportunities for him and will surely be a big bonus against the physically weaker Japanese team), the Socceroos were awarded a penalty. Although Viduka missed (it hit the crossbar), the ensuing confusion in the box allowed super-sub Timmy Cahill to make his first touch a goal. Nice!
Cahill was excellent from that point, the confidence boost gave him the ability to play aggressively all the time and that motivated the Aussies to push forward (along with a good talking to from Guus, I'm sure). In the second half the Aussies were also much more aggressive, coming in with some good tackles and throwing their weight around a bit more, shutting down their Dutch opponents (it should be noted Chipperfeld in particular succeeded at shutting down Van Persie).
At around the 70th minute, Luke Wilkshire produced a horrible tackle, which topped off a pretty bad day for him in general. He was promptly red-carded and sent off. This caused Guus to bring on Thompson for a bit more thrust up forward with the aim of putting the Dutch on the backfoot. All of this seemed to work quite well, the Aussies defended very well during this time and had some decent chances up front also. The one-man disadvantaged was almost unnoticeable.
So the game ended in a 1 - 1 draw, despite the Dutch putting pressure on towards the end and being denied by Schwarzer again and again (there must've been like 10 saves there). I think that, overall, it was a very good game and a very good result for us. Not only did we manage to score and get a result against absolutely top class opposition, it gave us the experience we needed before the world cup. Greece were not really world class opposition and Uruguay was quite some time ago. However, now we know how to play at the highest level (the Dutch are really not that far from Brazil in terms of technical ability, and definitely above Japan and Croatia), that will give us a lot of confidence going into the group stage.
Go Aussie!
Alex
posted by LX @ 3:13 AM
Comments: 3
