World Cupdate

And the Semifinals got underway this evening in Cape Town, South Africa, with Uruguay taking on the Netherlands.  Both teams were down key players from bookings and injuries, La Celeste missing Luis Suarez and Jorge Fucile, while the Oranje were down Gregory van der Wiel and Nigel de Jong.  uruguay took a 4-4-2 attack into the match with Edinson Cavani replacing Suarez and Diego Forlan expected to carry the load, while Holland fronted a 4-2-3-1 formation led by the ever-present Robin van Persie.  The Dutch, the orange-clad Denver Broncos of the FIFA world, were still looking for their first ever World Cup finals win, and were hoping van Persie would have his John Elway moment after having come so very close a number of times.  Uruguay meanwhile was hoping to continue their record of spoiler, the team that found a way to win even if it played an ugly game.  Both teams were content to squat early and counter-attack, but that meant neither squad was taking the forefront.  Holland finally dithered around in the corner enough so that Giovanni von Bronckhorst was able to set up a nuclear strike from the far turf, and it found its way into the back of the goal at 18' putting Holland up 0-1.  Suddenly Uruguay were in real trouble, but they didn't seem to want to up the attack too much...or maybe without Luis Suarez, they couldn't.  More trench warfare continued in the half, but Diego Forlan stepped up and ripped one in at 41' to equalize. 

Suddenly we had a game on our hands.  In the second half both squads went back to the trenches to try to tease another goal out, but it was a controversial goal at 70' by Holland's Wesley Sniejder that put Holland up, despite what looked like van Persie being offsides.  That controversy vanished a few minutes later however as Arjen Robben headed in a shot at 73'.  uruguay however was not done, and that offsides goal may go down as one of the great "What ifs?" in World Cup history as Maxi Periera banged one in at 90'+1 to make it a 2-3 game, but time expired and Holland will play for all the marbles on Sunday.  Will they face Spain or Germany?  We'll see tomorrow...