Oranje grabbed three points against Chile and play Mexico on Sunday. This time around the papers give the team a guarded thumbs-up.

The Volkskrant’s sports correspondent Willem Visser dubs the Dutch tactics ‘polder catenaccio’.

The team has ‘turned into an orange wall with a little hatch in it to accommodate a rare attack. Where once the Dutch would bring the game alive they now knock it down, then pounce.’

But ‘apart from the aesthetics, this type of scorched earth football is working a treat. Oranje are super fit, well-prepared, present a united front, have excellent substitutes and lead their opponents a merry dance in the second half. We have to give praise where praise is due!’ he writes.

Waiting game

The AD is looking ahead to the next game and thinks Mexico will probably be the first team to ‘play a waiting game’ against the Dutch.

‘Mexico may very well be the most dangerous opponent so far. They’re a team without star players led by a coach confident enough to leave ‘names’ from Europe like Manchester United player Hernández and sometimes Dos Santo (ex-Barcelona, now Villareal) on the bench. He has forged at least as strong a collective as Van Gaal,’ the paper writes.

NRC helpfully reminds its readers of the Dutch history against Mexico: ‘Out of six games, the Dutch won three, Mexico two and one ended in a draw.(..) The most recent match was in 2010 during the last World Championship. Van Persie scored twice, Hernández once.’ It could go either way, the paper thinks.

Mexico’s mid-fielder Héctor Herrera is the one to watch, warns football magazine Voetbal International while heaving a small sigh of relief because José Juan Vásquez, who was given a yellow card during the game against Croatia, won’t be playing.

Lose-lose

Trouw have an unusual take on the success of the Dutch team this morning: ‘For some it would have been better if Holland had lost in the first round’ is the header for a column in the paper.

In it, columnist Marijn Visser writes that incidences of domestic violence go up during tournaments like this: ‘When the Dutch lose, the number of reported incidences goes up by forty percent. And even when they win the number still goes up by 25%,’ Visser writes.