Ireland beating Holland, Classic! Classic! Classic!

It looks like that Holland will not be going to the World Cup next year! can Holland still reach the second place?

Playing kick + rush against 10 men suggests Van Gaal lost the plot. Instead of the dutch masters stroking the ball around magnificently we'll have the jolly green bruisers lead by uber-thug Keane. Well done Ireland, but some of us are still hurting.

Ah well, the adventages of having 2 nationalities: Spain look reborn with the injection of young talents. :)

now HE'S a classic classic classic

he better not injure himself in those green jerseys though....club b4 country...

In all seriousness I am reminded of the Onion article "The Sporting Team From My Area Is Better Than The Sporting Team From Your Area".

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We also do reasonably well in rugby but I havent followed it recently.

Except Ukraine, it seems..

The rest of the performance was remarkably calm and solid too.

1) Ray Houghton vs Italy (1994)
2) Robbie Keane vs Germany (2002)
3) John Aldridge vs Mexico (1994)
4) Jason Mcateer vs Holland (2001)
5) Matt Holland vs Cameroon (2002)

It was an encouraging game though - who knows what the team will be like with Keane running midfield, Duff running at defences and O'Shea shoring up at the back? If France either win or have a terrible time at Euro 2004 they could well be there for the taking in our first game with them....

Admittedly you do seem to have a slight problem in defence. What happened to Kevin Hofland?

Goal something along the lines of: Van Nistelrooy loses possession to Alan Maybury on the edge of the Irish area, with the Dutch in naff-all hurry to get the ball back. Maybury pops it to Reid (I think), who gives it to Keane. Keane sets off towards the Dutch area, Morrison to his right at all times (waving arm a lot). Dutch backing off him. Reid then makes a superb overlapping run, which bamboozles Bouma into running into Stam, while (I think) Reiziger is too occupied with Morrison, leaving a gaping hole in front of the right-hand-side of the goal (from where Keane is facing). 25 yards out, Keane takes it on his right and shoots low and hard with enough swerve to just take it away from a full-stretch Van Der Sar and nestle into the right-hand side of the net. Super-fine.

One reason the result impressed me: this was second-string Ireland, up to a point; and the commentator said at the outset that he just hoped they didn't get thrashed. And he meant it, kindly.

Jeez - I'm starting to think it was John Helm. Was it?

- Makaay doesn't seem to be able to play effectively with either of the two above, and despite his good form at the moment isn't top choice for a 1-central-striker 4-3-3 scenario.

- despite his solid playing at Milan Seedorf is still national bogeyman number one for an extraordinarily long streak of weak games in the national team (and for missing three penalty kicks at various times) while still laying down demands on what position he wants to play. Much to everyone's surprise he has performed rather well lately though.

- Van Der Vaart and Sneijder have played very weak at Ajax in the 2nd half of the season and seem to be disappear when they're called upon. People start to suspect that their good performance against Scotland was just a one-off.

- Van der Meyde has been warming the bench at Inter almost all season, riddled with small injuries. Whether he'll ever be as good as he was two years ago is anyone's guess.

- Van Hooijdonk is on fire at the moment but there's no chance in hell he'll ever get a starting position with three strikers from top European clubs competing with him.

- Davids was one of the few who looked solid, but seemed to be half asleep during the Ireland game. Everybody is hoping he was deliberately taking it easy.

- Over the last few seasons, Kevin Hofland has proved to be rediculously injury-prone and his development as a player has all but stagnated at PSV. The only two defenders who could arguably have been included are Mario Melchiot of Chelsea and Nigel De Jong of Ajax, but neither are particularly good.

It was Ireland's second string, and they were good. A full-strength Ireland would be quite something, one assumes. But on that evidence, Andy Reid is much too good for Forest to hang onto, and Graham Barrett could yet prove to have not entirely suffered from never seeing Arsenal's first team (c.f. Given at Blackburn). Oh, and all that stuff people always say about Kenny Cunningham being under-rated - all true.