Holland line-up: Stekelenburg, Van Der Wiel, Heitinga, Mathijsen, Van Bronkhorst (c), Van Bommel, Kuyt, De Jong, Van Perise (Huntelaar, 80'), Sneijder (Afellay, 92'), Robben (Elia, 71')
Slovakia line-up: Mucha, Pekarik, Skrtel, Zabavnik (Jakubko, 88'), Weiss, Vittek, Stoch, Durica, Hamsik (c) (Sapara, 87'), Jendrisek (Kopunek, 71'), Kucka
Holland make a date with the quarter finals with a yet another below par performance. Holland were very much comfortable throughout with a few scares but Holland did what they had to do without any exuberance. Jendrisek, however, had the opening shot but it wasn't struck well and it sailed over the bar. The opening chances for Holland came from Van Persie and their best player of the tournament Wesley Sneijder. Eighteen minutes into the match returning Arjen Robben opened his account for the tournament; latching onto a long ball down the wing Robben was able to cut inside, thanks to Van Persie's decoy run out wide, and Robben placed it into the bottom corner giving Mucha no chance at his near post. Van Persie hasn't sparkled yet in this World Cup but for all his great positional runs and clever channel play he lacked the final finish that could have put Holland more ahead at half-time.
The second half continued in the same vain and Robben was looking menacing again, with almost a carbon copy of the goal. Van Persie found yet more space as the defence just couldn't pick him up, he squared the ball to Robben who was again allowed to cut inside of the defence where he fired another shot, only to kept out by the fingertips of Mucha. Mucha somehow kept Mathijsen out from the resulting corner as Mathijsen wrapped his foot round the delivery, Mucha saved it with his face as he clearly knew nothing about it. It took almost seventy minutes but Slovakia then started to play football and attack the Dutch defence. Stoch forced a great fingertips save from Stekelenburg before Vittek missed a couple of wonderful one-on-one chances as Slovakia found holes in the defence. Holland knew they needed a second goal to wrap the game up and with Robben now resting on the bench they had to look to their other predators. They found their second goal with five minutes to go to make sure they were going to the quarter finals; Liverpool's Dirk Kuyt found Wesley Sneijder with a low cross allowing Sneijder to just slot the ball home into an empty net after Mucha failed to deal with the long ball through to Kuyt in the first place. Although the result was finalised the game wasn't completely over as Slovakia managed to find a consolation goal; Stekelenburg brought Vittek down in the box, forcing a penalty from the referee and it was Vittek who stepped up and slotted calmly into the corner to end Slovakia's World Cup with a goal.
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