Must say I did not expect Argentina to win the penalties, let alone rather easily.
The dutch team is well known for sucking at penalties.
I think they have around a 25% chance of winning, despite usually having decent goalies. I was surprised they pulled it off against Costa Rica, but today, the first shot said it all.
The game wasn't very exciting as such, and towards the end you could see that both sides really were winded. It also didn't look very intense, but I think that's an easy misconception.
The way the played the game tactically meant that there was zero room for error on both sides. The defensive mid fields of both sides were incredible, in being able to completely suppress each others offensive, with two of the best arrangements of the world cup completely disappearing.
As soon as van Persie got anywhere close to the goal, he had both inside defenders glued to him. Whenever Messi had the ball, there were two players on him. And amazingly the same held for Robben and Higuain, mostly.
I'm really impressed by what Kuyt pulled out of the hat for this game though. He was all over the place, always architecting some kind of attack, but there simply was no coming through into any kind of position where you could shoot. And whenever there was even the slightest error, the ball got insanely dangerous right away. Cillessen had to save a few of those, and the dew times the Dutch got the ball close to the goal, there were some genuinely dangerous moments. But due to the very stifling play, nobody really got those break-aways or combinations that they need to score.
Germany will have to work very hard to take this one, but the same is true of Argentina. We will see how the team that choked against Ghana and Algeria will be able to deal with a team that destroys play early and aggressively.
Third place is also going to be interesting, I wonder if Brazil can recover from that loss.
It's a shame to see the Dutch miss another opportunity at a final, but today they simply didn't play as well as Argentina did, though in the end the difference was reflected by the result - these were two very evenly matched teams, and depending on the result of Argentina-Germany, it may have been the two strongest/most effective teams of the World Cup.