OTA Berlin Apartments

Berlin / Kaapstad          06-07-2010

The World Cup continues with the best four teams left in the tournament – today the former twice winners Uruguay play the double runners-up Netherlands in Cape Town. The winner of this game today will play the winner of tomorrow’s game between Spain and Germany in the final this coming Sunday.

Uruguayan football’s history and its national identity come from the two epic dates when their team lifted the World Cup as winners – 1930 and 1950.

They were also semi-finalists in both 1954 and 1970 – which shows that this small nation of 3 million inhabitants punches far above their weight on the international scene and should only be dismissed as potential ultimate winners at one’s peril.

These earlier successes were not just ‘a flash in the pan’ and today former players of these teams are seen as national heroes, as champions and as idols.

The Dutch also have their World Cup history – not as poignant perhaps but more recent -of playing and losing in the World Cup finals in both 1974 and 1978 losing in both cases to home teams – the then ‘West Germany’ and Argentina.

Argentina was at the time led by a bloody gang of fascist generals following a coup against Isabel Perón. The armed forces formally exercised power through a junta led consecutively by Videla, Viola, Galtieri and Bignone up until the end 1983 and many Dutch fans and some football players called for a ban of the World Cup which would have been a good idea.

The Dutch team did win the 1988 European championship in style with the likes of Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard but could not extrapolate this success to the subsequent World Cup in Italy.

There followed defeats to Brazil in the US [where a clearly off-side Romario goal was allowed] and again in a shoot out in Paris in 1998 where they were arguable the better side.

These were two frustrating World Cup near misses caused by Brazil – however their defeat to Holland some days ago will put this particular rivalry back into the Dutch’s favour.

The last game, a 2-1 win against Brazil –after conceding an early goal and weathering an early Brazilian onslaught the team had enough inner strength and focus to turn the game around in their favour.

This win in particular against the World Cup favourites has left the Dutch team buzzing and fearing nobody.

They are enjoying a phenomenal 24 unbeaten run -having won all their qualifying matches and won all 3 group games and two knockout matches so far at this World Cup.

However Dutch coach Bert van Marwijk is wisely treating the last surviving South American team with a great deal of respect – he has called it a very dangerous game and calling the Uruguayans fighters and survivors.

He has admonished his team to remain very focused.

Uruguay, on their part will need to be at their absolute best to have any chance of winning the game because both suspensions and injury have hit them hard.

Oscar Tabárez, the very affable and intelligent coach of Uruguay has said that Holland can be beat – however it would have to entail neutralizing the quality of Arjen Robben. He says he thinks he knows how this can be done……….but for obvious reasons did not want to go into any details!

Up front attacker Luis Suarez, who earns his money at Ajax Amsterdam, knows how to run havoc  terrorising Dutch defences – however he has been  banned for his red-card foul of handballing an ingoing ball in the last minute of their game against Ghana.

With Suarez out, it will fall on the shoulders of Diego Forlan ‘to carry the piano for the team’ up front – he scored the equaliser against Ghana for his third goal of the tournament – and in him his nation’s weighty expectations have a worthy leader.

OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog prediction -  if the Dutch take this game completely seriously and focus on what they have to do, the Uruguayans will be hard pressed to make an indent in the strong and well-organized mid + back field players.

However the ball is round, as they say. Both teams are easy to like – they play fair [yes Luis Suarez's handball notwithstanding] and it is hard to bring out any negatives about either team. Both teams deserve to go through.

The referee in today’s game in Cape Town at the Green Point Stadium will be Mr Ravshan Irmatov from Uzbekistan who also officiated at the first game of this World Cup between South Africa and Mexico – and did an outstanding job.

Tags: arjen robben, bert van marwijk, holland vs. uruguay, Luis Suarez, Oscar Tabárez

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 13:38 and is filed under Berlin, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.