Hey! More Drinks Here.

I was just thinking that it would be nice to write up a World Cup match without getting into a complex, technical discussion about the rules. Not least because I'm a little bit stoned and prone to going off on tangents. Unfortunately the Netherlands versus Mexico match brought us the first drinks break of the tournament.

Although it's the middle of winter in Brazil the heat or more accurately the humidity was always going to be an issue at this World Cup. As a result FIFA put in place a procedure whereby if the temperature at the start of the game rose above 32C the stadium doctor would strongly advise the referee to insert a three minute "cooling break" at the 30 minute mark of each half to allow the players to take on water and, well, cool down. However it has always been down to the referees discretion whether or not they do this. On this occasion Pedro Proença - the Portuguese referee - opted to include a cooling break despite the average temperature only being 29C. With FIFA seeming to make up a half-time figure of 38C obviously one of the tangents I could now go off on is how temperature readings vary constantly and are very dependent on the methodology used to measure them. 

However I think the main reason for this particular cooling down break was as the result of a tactical play of Louis van Gaal - the Netherlands and now Manchester United's head coach. As was shown during their respective final group games both the Netherlands and Mexico play a very similar style of play. This involves spending much of the game using precision skill and passing along with some subtle, erm, physical intimidation to break down the opponent physically and mentally in order to score late goals.

Hidden amongst the folklore surrounding their "Total Football" the Dutch are past masters at this - particularly the fouling - so were obvious favourites to win this match. However the current Dutch side is not the same one that played in the 1974 World Cup despite having some creaky older players amongst its ranks and Mexico certainly don't deserve to be lumped together with some of the more agricultural South American sides such as Honduras. As a result Mexico most certainly stood a chance in this match especially if they were better able to deal with the heat.

So van Gaal set about making sure that there was a cooling break in this match to remove any advantage the Mexicans might have gained while at the same time helping to psychologically unsettle the Mexican team who wouldn't have been planning for a cooling break. The main part of this was a press conference he gave yesterday. Realising that the Netherlands has a reputation for its liberal approach to marijuana van Gaal gave a speech that was long, weaving and made leading claims about how the players would could lose up three litres of fluid during the game, needed to drink frequently and could even end up hallucinating from dehydration. This was meant to play on everyone's experiments with smoking marijuana and for those who hadn't experimented bring in issues about me, Rihanna and countless others

This of course added to the matter of the 2022 Qatar World Cup which has been a massive issue at this World Cup because it seems likely that it will have to be cancelled due to the heat. Then there is also the issue that US broadcasters have long complained that with 45 minute halves of often continuous play football matches don't allow them to show enough commercials. After all it appears your average American's maximum attention span is around 20 minutes. So in the end I think the referee just threw his hands up the air and went; "OK you can have a cooling down break!"

Despite this the Mexican team seemed to cope with the unusual break in play better than the Dutch coming out from the half-time break looking the stronger side. This was confirmed in the 48th minute when Giovani dos Santos put them 1-0 up with an impressive left-footed shot. However with the Dutch famously being at their most deadly in the last few minutes this simply seemed to be Mexico falling into the Dutch trap of then trying to sit back and protect the 1-0 lead. This seemed to be confirmed when Wesley Sneijder equalised with a deadly right-footed shot from range in the 88th minute. True to form Arjen Robben won the Netherlands a penalty in the 92nd minute which Klaas-Jan Huntelaar converted in the 94th minute after the Mexicans spent around 2 minutes trying to put him off.

This is how it ended and although Sneijder scored in the so-called "Hitler minute" I think that was more ironic than intended. We will find out later who the Netherlands will meet in their quarter-final.

18:45 on 29/6/14 (UK date).

Edited at around 23:10 on 29/6/14 (UK date) to add;

I should start by clarifying that the Netherlands didn't secure their winning penalty because Robben dived. Instead Robben tricked Rafael Marquez into just catching him on the toe and then made sure that the referee was aware of what was technically a foul. This isn't strictly speaking cheating and fits into that grey area known as gamesmanship. It is also are large element of the Mexicans repertoire so I don't think they're so much angry about what Robben did but the fact he did it so much better then they could.

The other game of the day was between Costa Rica and Greece. Now Greece don't so much kill off a game as suck any pleasant memory of football directly from the minds of anyone who is unfortunate enough to lay eyes on them. As a result in the first half absolutely nothing of note happened.

In the second half also absolutely nothing of any note happened until the 52 minute when Costa Rica's captain Bryan Ruiz attempted to smash the ball into the bottom right-hand corner of the net from about 20 yards out. Unfortunately he very badly scuffed this shot. Fortunately that scuff put just enough spin on the ball to carry it into the bottom left-hand corner of the net while the Greek 'keeper was carefully guarding the bottom right-hand corner. Then in the 54th Greece's Torosidis blocked the ball in the penalty with his arm meaning that there should have been a clear penalty to Costa Rica and a sending off. Unfortunately the referee was Australian and there's a large Greek population in Australia so instead he decided to book a Costa Rican player who was sitting on the substitutes bench.

Then absolutely nothing of note happened until the 66th minute when Costa Rica's Oscar Duarte did a late and rash challenge on Greece's Jose Holebas which left the referee with no option other then to show him a yellow card. As this was Duarte's second yellow card of the match he was then shown a red card and sent off leaving Costa Rica to play the last 24 minutes with only 10 men.

Then absolutely nothing of note happened until the 91st minute (90 + 6 minutes stoppage) when Papastathopoulos netted Greece an equaliser with a shot from close range. This forced the game into 30 minutes of extra-time which apparently livened up slightly in the last 10 minutes but by that point I'd given up in favour of playing "Lez or Hag" on the Pride hashtag. Not further goals were scored so it went to a penalty shoot-out which Costa Rica won 5-4.

Costa Rica will now go on to play the Netherlands in the second quarter-final which weirdly will be played first on July 4th.