Goal - Tim Krul was an unlikely hero as the Netherlands secured a 4-3 shoot-out win over Costa Rica to book a FIFA World Cup semi-final place.
Over 120 goalless minutes in Salvador, Louis van Gaal's team struck the post or crossbar on three occasions and the Manchester United-bound manager unleashed an unexpected secret weapon from the bench during the dying seconds of extra time.
Man, the last 20 minutes were crazy. Both teams deserved to win tonight.
As the coach would you really tell your team to go head to head with a team that thrives on counters and speed?? Costa Rica came close in the end but as soon as it went to penalties I knew it had gotten extremely hard for them to get a win. I knew Krul was going to come out, no way Van Gaal was going to take the risk with Cillessen. In all, I'm not impressed by Holland, they have gotten good wins but Australia, Mexico, and Costa Rica have shown they're not that big and bad. Germany could take them down.
Hearing that Di Maria is injured I think it just makes it much more difficult for Argentina to take the win. But, Argentina have been playing well, for a sucky defense look at the scores of their games, they make their mistakes but Romero has shown up, some defenders have as well.
Reason the Netherlands appeared bad against Costa Rica was simply that they were defending with 10 players, as they intended to go for penalty shootouts from the start, recognizing they wouldn't be able to beat the Netherlands in a different way. It's almost impossible to get through a defensive line like that. I'm impressed they actually managed to create chances, though van Persie played too poorly to actually finish them off.
Putting Krul on for the penalties was a stroke of psychological genius by Van Gaal.
Introducing an element of suprise/doubt onto the likely stress of the Costa Rica penalty-takers was really finding an edge for his team.
I am sad Costa Rica lost but I am glad that the umpires made the right calls a first for this world cup......