Holland got two great gifts from the English defense yesterday in the form of hilarious mistakes by Rio Ferdinand and Gareth Barry, yet Arjen Robben thinks these mistakes were forced upon them by the way Holland played.

"Of course these were mistakes,they simply gave away the two goals," Robben said.

"But we were so close to them that they didn't have time to build up. Playing that way we forced them to make mistakes and on each mistake we wasted no time to benefit."

Despite the two given goals England played a good second half and managed to score two as well.

Robben: "Such a shame. We controlled the game in the first half, but after the break we weren't so well organized. We made more mistakes and gave away some chances. But okay, we must learn from these things. At the World Cup we will encounter opposition of this quality as well. That is the value of a friendly like this. We must learn from the things that went wrong."

Have a look at the head-to-head record.

"The intellectualisation
of football has
always foundered
on a simple problem-
-the players. Doing
all your most
rewarding thinking
with your feet seems
to dull the philo-
sophical impulse.
Unless, of course,
you are Dutch.
According to legend,
Europeans played
a moronic, muscular
version of the world's
game, until Holland
proclaimed its vision
of total football in the
1974 World Cup,
and enlightenment
dawned."

From:
Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football