It looks like to me that this shootout was very well planned by the Dutch, And I'm not just talking about Krul being subbed on, but the way each penalty was taken. I think that this strategy has been practiced and worked on many months before the world cup started, it wasn't done in the spur of the moment.

Van Gaal has also "over worked" his players to train them extra hard before the tournament in order to give them supreme fitness and have that edge over the other nations they face in extra time (like what Guus does to his teams). They also appear to be very well prepared for penalties, and in knockout football, many matches and tournaments are decided by these situations.

The Dutch have a reputation of being the worst penalty takers in the world, however their display tonight reminded me of Germans. If you've ever seen Germany in a penalty shootout before, they are perfect and make it look so easy, I'm not sure if they've ever missed a penalty? I also remember hearing a few years ago that the Germans actually train for penalties in practice. ( I believe a commentator said it)

Meanwhile I've heard from some coaches in interviews that you cannot train for penalties, and that's it's purely down to nerves and luck, hitting the net from 12 yards, how hard can it be?. Yet you get that frantic chaos associated with penalty shootouts, who's going to take it? who steps up? which way will they go? can they do it? it's make or break for the players and their nation in penalty shoot outs.

The Dutch shootout looked nothing like that, they were clinical and precise, it looked as if the Dutch players taking their kicks as part of a training drill. Their 4 most experienced players took the first 4 kicks, they had a dedicated shot stopping goalkeeper come onto the field in the 119th minute who I believe had studied the preferred direction of each kicker (like Jens Lehmann 2006). If the Dutch players kicks were 5% less precise, and had struck their penalties a balls length nearer to the keeper, or a balls length away from the keeper, at least 2 or more of the Dutch penalty shots would have either been saved by Navas or come out off the post.

Anyway, where i am going with this? I think that this shootout by the Dutch was very deliberate and prepared for months ago, it's not something that happened in this game. And the belief that you cannot prepare for a shootout appears to be false.

What do other people think?

Edited by axelv: 6/7/2014 04:26:46 PM

Think Krul is very unsportsmanlike.

-PB

The craziest part of it all is that Tim Krul isn't renowned at all for being great at stopping penalties. Before this shootout he'd saved just 2 of the last 20 penalties he's faced in the Premier League.

It was just a scare tactic from van Gaal, throw Krul on and the Costa Rica team would have been thinking "He must be a good penalty stopper". He could have put the worst keeper in Holland in there and still get the better of the opponents minds.

What did he do

He took his time and told each Costa Rica kicker he knew which way they were going to kick the ball.

And he had the audacity to be right.

Those mind games.

But most of the battle in a penalty shootout is the mind game aspect. Krul may have been unsportmanlike but the Costa Rican's could have done the same.

If LVG's gamble didn't pay off then we would be here saying how big of a fool the Dutch side were.