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Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Suffering from chronic idiocy since 1977

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It’s Over

Hol­land lost tonight against Por­tu­gal. 1–2. I must admit that Por­tu­gal was defin­i­tively the stronger team espe­cially dur­ing the first half. Before I go on I have to say that we were deal­ing with a clas­sic case of a home ref­eree. Scan­dalous. Sure it is no excuse but I have never seen so many free kicks going to the home team — ass hole. All in all I think reach­ing the semi-final was not that bad for Holland.

Holland’s biggest prob­lem was, as usual, play­ing posi­tion. We lost the ball many times in the cen­ter. Long balls to the front and fin­gers crossed that some player, such as Makaay (who was brought in at the start of the sec­ond half) or Van Nis­tel­rooy might be able to con­trol it and get a shot at the goal. It never hap­pened. In the sec­ond half Hol­land played more aggres­sive and I really felt that things would hap­pen. Then Por­tu­gal was unlucky and Andrade diverted the ball in his own goal. 1–2. The pres­sure was on, but Hol­land never got a good shot at it. Goal­keeper Van der Sar had some ter­rific saves, if it was not for him the score would have been much worse.

Now Hol­land needs to get ready for Ger­many in 2006. The world cup. We have a decent team and the young­sters will need to prove them­selves. But with peo­ple like Robben, Van der Vaart, Snei­jder, Heitinga, Bouma and oth­ers I think we will be a team to watch. Let’s just hope we can avoid the South Korean fiasco two years ago (we did not qualify…)

This item was posted by dhilhorst on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004.

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15 comments on “It’s Over”

  1. Posted by Colly on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004.

    My sym­pa­thies. If only Ruud hadn’t slipped in the six yeard box. Keep look­ing to the Ger­many World Cup…

    How have you man­aged to write about it so soon after the game? I have yet to come out of my gloom after England’s sim­i­lar fate. Por­tu­gal man­aged to get our man Rooney out of the game, and we cer­tainly suf­fered the ‘home ref­eree’ prob­lem — did you see our ‘win­ning’ goal in the 89th minute? Every two years I put myself through this. Why?

  2. Posted by George Papadakis on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004.

    Actu­ally, if Hol­land had started this game in a more offen­sive way, rather than wait­ing for Por­tu­gal to attack, things would have been much bet­ter for your team.

    Let’s see what my team (Greece) will do tomorrow…

  3. Posted by Tomek on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004.

    Come on — blam­ing refree is non­sense. Por­tu­gal was defi­nately bet­ter tonight, that’s all — and Im writ­ing it not as a fan of Por­tu­gal (I’m from Poland)

    Bet­ter luck next time!

  4. Posted by Gordon on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004.

    I thought the ref­eree wasn’t too bad, pos­si­bly missed some book­ings for div­ing (both sides, what WAS Robben doing in the first half?)

    Totally agree that Hol­land should’ve started attack­ing ear­lier but I don’t think they could as Deco, C.Ronaldo and Figo were dom­i­nant early on.

    What price a Por­tu­gal vs Greece final (rematch!)?!

    Ohh and you are right, Hol­land should be a strong team in 2006.

  5. Posted by Sunny on Wednesday, June 30th, 2004.

    Hol­land were a pretty good team around the last world cup as well, but you have to qual­ify to play.

    Hol­land are a very tal­ented team and always fun to watch but their per­for­mances are not very con­vinc­ing to say the least.

    Por­tu­gal who are the peren­nial under­achiev­ers are shin­ing under the guid­ance of Luis Felipe Sco­lari. Coach­ing mat­ters and shows. Now how for an excel­lent dou­ble for Sco­lari — the World Cup with Brazil and Euro 2004 with Portugal!

  6. Posted by Aleksandar on Thursday, July 1st, 2004.

    Por­tu­gal has reached its max­i­mum. Czech are by far the best team in the Euro 04 and they will cer­tainly win. Nedved is good as always, as well as other guys in the mid­dle, but what is most impor­tant is that Baroš is play­ing extremly well. He never played like this in Liv­er­pool, which prob­a­bly proves the point that Liv­er­pool need either dif­fer­ent coach or dif­fer­ent play­ers in the middle.

  7. Posted by Thalwil on Thursday, July 1st, 2004.

    My sym­pa­thies. Por­tu­gal have played well and deserve to be in the final — but so do Hol­land and Eng­land, who were both treated rather unfairly by ‘home ref­er­ees’… there’s only ONE COLLINA…

    Yes, i’m expect­ing great things of Hol­land in 2006… Holland-England final any­one? The only ques­tion is: who gets the hon­our of beat­ing Brazil and who gets the fun of thrash­ing Ger­many… :)> (my only com­plaint about Hol­land this year is that they didn’t win against Duitsland)…

  8. Posted by Didier Hilhorst on Thursday, July 1st, 2004.

    Ok, first, I know it’s rather cheap to blame the ref­eree. I know we did not lose because of the ref­eree. I also know that Frisk is usu­ally a good ref­eree, but in this case he really was behav­ing like a home ref­eree. That said, Por­ti­gal was the stronger team.

    And yes, Robben did not play his best match. He did poorly on the left side this time. Though he had two Por­tuguese defensers around him all the time. I also think the yel­low card was jus­ti­fied. Dutch foot­ballers need to learn how to make a the­atri­cal dive. They suck at it.

    If Greece beats the Czech I’m going to eat my mouse. I love the Greek but there’s no way they have to tal­ent to beat Nedved, Bar­ros and the like. No way. We played our best match against the Czech, heck I would even say that was the best match of the tour­na­ment so far.

  9. Posted by Menc on Thursday, July 1st, 2004.

    Blam­ing the ref­eree? I can agree with that as an Eng­land sup­porter. All Deco had to do was fall over and it was a free­kick. And that’s with­out men­tion­ing our dis­al­l­lowed goal.

  10. Posted by Tom on Thursday, July 1st, 2004.

    I didn’t watch it, but I can sym­pa­thise — as Thal­wil said, there’s only one Col­lina (unfor­tu­nately). So damn annoying.

    Oh, and any Eng­land sup­port­ers: http://www.ursmeier.ch/

  11. Posted by Reinier on Friday, July 2nd, 2004.

    This tour­na­ment was all about the ref­er­ees against Holland.

    To be hon­est, they played very bad, but Greece also played very bad. So even with some luck and very bad play, you can reach the finals. And that’s where we would have been, if it wasn’t for the stu­pid referees…

  12. Posted by Micah Goulart on Friday, July 2nd, 2004.

    How did the mouse taste??

    Greece is in the finals. Por­tu­gal gets a rematch, some­thing they are dying for.

    I’ll be root­ing for Por­tu­gal. Hol­land didnt even score against Por­tu­gal, so there’s no way they should be com­plain­ing. Out of 5 games, they only won one game in the reg­u­lar 90 mins. You have to be able to put away those games.

    Brazil vs Por­tu­gal — World Cup 2006 finals. Sco­lari vs Par­reira. A Brazil­ian showdown.

  13. Posted by Jessi on Friday, July 2nd, 2004.

    All­right, we sucked. Big time.

  14. Posted by Ricardo Vidal on Saturday, July 3rd, 2004.

    First of all, Eng­land vs Por­tu­gal was a fair and square win. It was a foul in the goal­keep­ers box, which means: NO GOAL.

    Beck­ham said the grass wasnt good? Remem­ber this: the por­tuguese also shot from the same spot!

    As for Hol­land, like some­one said before, the dutch didnt even shoot one ball at the por­tuguese goal, so… with or with­out the ref, no chance. Ah… and Figo was on fire! :)

    As for Greece, never hav­ing scored a goal in a Euro­pean Cup, they must feel like gods. Their soc­cer sucks but some­how they make it along the way. I was root­ing for the chzecs, but now it’ll be a pay-back type of thing.

    And like a famous brand­name is spread­ing around: “Impos­si­ble is noth­ing”. Let the roteiro ball tell the story! :)

  15. Posted by michaelyap on Wednesday, July 7th, 2004.

    I won­der if Dan Rubin ever talk foot­ball? Amer­i­cans never seem to like foot­ball. The whole world is watch­ing the Euro Cup, and the com­ing Copa Amer­ica as well. Dur­ing those weeks, what were they doing? :-)