Wes die ook is goed voor vuile Brazilianen*

We owe a lot to the Dutch us English. After all, when Charles II returned to England from the Netherlands after his spell in exile he brought back with him new methods of cooking, brewing, architecture and civility. The Dutch language gave the English such words as: anchor, bush, dyke and drill - and a few others that don't have sexual connotations such as frolic, gimp, kink and loiter - okay I lied, the Dutch are responsible for a lot of the rude words in modern English useage.

They also gave us Rinus Michels who begat 'total football' and was, in every sense of the word, a footballing genius. Those of us of a certain age still get goose bumps watching the Dutch side of 1974 or the Ajax side of 1971-1973 whenever ESPN decides to run one of its 'golden age' series, Cruyff, Rep, Resenbrink, Krol, Neeskens were the original easy on the eye footballers.

Since the Euro win of 1988 however Holland have, along with Spain and England, being Europe's great underachievers, a team known for self-implosion, a team which could argue itself into a paper bag. We saw them at Euro 2008 lose to a half decent Russia side in the Quarter Finals when it looked like they could beat anything before them, in the 2006 World Cup they had lost the 'battle of Nuremburg' to Portugal.

The current Dutch side is the usual blend of experience and more experience. Holland don't do youth and inexperience in the big tournaments, they blood players in the Under-19 and Under-21's and friendlies, the World Cup squad of 23 has only six players (and that includes two of the goalkeepers) with less than 25 caps, the average for the squad is 41 caps.

To beat the favourites and set-up a Semi-Final with either Uruguay or Ghana means that Holland must now fancy themselves to reach their third World Cup final, which could be a repeat of either the 1974 or 1978 finals. You have to hope it's third time lucky, unless of course you're a German, Spaniard or Argentine!

* rough translation is 'Wes is too good for dirty Brazilians'