Dutch fail to serve up a treat but do enough

SOCCER/GROUP E Netherlands 2 Denmark 0:THEY ALL count, even for the Netherlands. The fabled lambs of world football began with a comfortable win yesterday but even after they went ahead, it seemed for a long period in this match that we would not see a Dutchman score.

Over 83,000 showed up at Soccer City holding high hopes of witnessing the thrill of Dutch expression on the football field. The flicks and deft touches became more evident in the last few minutes, when all competitive edge had left the game. But the abiding memory was of the men in orange celebrating a messy own goal with an enthusiasm that cannot have impressed the past masters attending the ground.

Watching the Netherlands celebrate an own goal is a bit like watching Meryl Streep whooping it up for a British Soap Award. It just didn’t sit right. But the Netherlands were glad of that opening goal, which came after Simon Poulsen’s misjudged headed clearance from Robin van Persie’s rudimentary cross hit Daniel Agger’s back and flew into the Danish net.

The Dane smiled in disbelief and it took van Persie a couple of seconds before his good fortune registered. In fairness, the Arsenal man had persevered in chasing down a ball to nothing prior to getting the cross in and Paulson’s mistake was the break they were looking for.

For the first half, the Dutchman had laconically played the ball around the field, fussy as seamstresses but causing no undue alarm among their stoic opponents, who settled into matters nicely after 20 minutes. It could have been that Morten Olsen dusted down his copy of Ireland’s old handbook on how to play the Dutch. They held their line, tried nothing fancy and broke in the rare cases when the opportunity was presented to them – Nicklas Bendtner (who was well enough to play despite Danish vows that he was not) made one tricky run on 27 minutes and Thomas Kahlenberg struck a decent shot on 35 minutes after a brilliant cross field ball from Christian Poulsen.

But the Danish attacks were few and far between and the surprise was they did not but more high balls on to the Dutch back four just to see what would happen: Giovvanni van Bronckhorst was caught terribly by a rare Danish cross late in the game and the ball fell for Dennis Rommedahl, who hit a curiously indifferent shot at Maarten Stekelenburg’s goal.

The first appearance of the Mexican Wave occurred just 25 minutes in and it was not a good sign in terms of a crowd being bewitched by Orange flair. Paulson was unfortunate in his mistake, Dirk Kuyt and Nigel de Wong mined his flank industriously but the left back had had a very composed half and he atoned slightly for his error late in the game when he hooked a certain goal for Dutch replacement Ibrahim Afellay, off the line.

“I told him it happened to me one time in my career so it can also happen to him,” said Olsen afterwards. “He has to forget it and move on to the next game because he played a good game.”

The game was winding down when Kuyt added the second, hammering in from close range after Mark van Bommel played a fly through ball which Eljero Elia – electrifying in his few minutes on the field – sent glancing off the post.

From the neck up, Kuyt has the ruddy complexion of a Dutch farm boy but in physique and demeanour, he does not seem cut from the precious Netherlands fabric, with that ferocious work rate and slightly bandy-legged running style of his. But he is an integral part of Bert van Marwijk’s squad, always available from the pass, alert to gaps in the defence and happy to run all day.

The Dutch midfield dominated, with Wesley Sneijder controlling the game without appearing to break sweat and van Bommel a forceful presence at the heart of the Netherlands team.

Van Persie looked very sharp but too often looked for the sublime pass instead of firing on instinct. He could have had his first goal after closing in on a bad pass from Simon Kjaer but for a smart piece of goalkeeping from Thomas Sorensen.

After Kuyt’s goal, the Dutch could afford to indulge themselves a little. They introduced a couple of gems from the bench and, a jaunty backheel from de Jong after 87 minutes initiated a series of slick passes.

But the thing was, they led the whole way back to Stekelenburg’s goal.

Sometimes the Dutch are like the kids in the playground with the bag of tricks who forget about everything around them. It was hard to know for those few seconds whether they were trying to delight their ever-receptive fans or simply delighting themselves.