By Ollie Irish

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A Netherlands fan celebrates after the final whistle

The 3-2 scoreline makes this sound like quite a thrilling match, but strangely it wasn’t that satisfying to watch, despite Gio Van Bonckhorst’s goal of the tournament, from 41 yards out.

Perhaps the relatively slow pace of the game contributed to the feeling that we were watching two decent, if not world-class teams. I guess when it comes to semi-finals, the urge to not lose becomes greater than the urge to win, and that showed throughout – you rarely felt that both teams were really going for it, except in the final 120 seconds, when Uruguay got a sniff of an unlikely 3-3 draw and attacked like mad.

So Uruguay, who did really miss Luis Suarez last night, exit (albeit with the playoff to come on Saturday), but can be very proud of their performances – and you did feel in the end that they were happy to have got this far. The Dutch strut on, dancing to the tune of their slapheaded stars. Will they face Spain or Germany, their conquerors in 1974? We’ll find out soon enough. I think Spain will win tonight, but that’s just a gut feeling – writing off these Germans is not an option, though I do think they’ll really miss the graft and composure of Thomas Müller.

Gio’s Wonder Goal:

Tags: 2010 world cup, arjen robben, Diego Forlan, netherlands, uruguay, wesley sneijder, world cup
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