The second day of the round of 16 was all about late drama as the Netherlands and Costa Rica won through.
The Netherlands left it later than they would have liked to earn the win that their second half (or should that be fourth quarter) performance deserved and then Greece equalised with minutes to go against Costa Rica, although a late save in extra-time by Costa Rica’s Keylor Navas proved just as vital to the final result.
First though, Netherlands v Mexico: with the heat obviously on the minds of the players, and cooling breaks coming into play, it was a disjointed game and in the end, was won by the team that made the least major mistakes in the most dangerous areas.
Giovani dos Santos’ strike was an excellent goal for Mexico but aside from that they hardly threatened in the second half.
Louis van Gaal said afterwards that he’d used the cooling break in the second half to change his side’s tactics and there’s nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t like the Mexicans couldn’t have shaken things up themselves.
The changes won the day but they still had to work hard. Wesley Sneijder took his goal well after Guillermo Ochoa had made a couple of world class saves and finally Mexico made the mistake of getting too close to Arjen Robben in the box.
Penalty it was, and brilliantly despatched it was by Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. No goalkeeper would have saved that one.
The evening game badly needed Costa Rica to score first and score early for it be anything other than a cagey affair.
Unfortunately for the neutral, Costa Rica’s goal only came after 51 minutes, prior to which little of note had really happened.
And despite picking up cards as if they were going out of fashion, and going down to 10 men, they looked as if they would hold on, but it wasn’t quite to be as Greece snatched an equaliser to break Costa Rican hearts.
But they would mend soon enough.
Extra time saw the Costa Rica players taking on the roles of a cricket team trying to save a Test in the final hour, keeping the ball out by any means.
Down to 10 men for 54 minutes and with their players barely able to move at the end, they then stepped up and produced five excellent penalties to finish off Greece.
And Navas played his part by saving from Theofanis Gekas to put the Costa Ricans into the quarter-finals for the first time.
Netherlands-Costa Rica could actually be quite a game on Saturday. Looking forward to it already.