Netherlands Holds Off South Africa, Squeezing Into World Cup Quarterfinals

Thembi Kgatlana had time to drag off another trick, to take another shot, to ship another jolt of electrical energy by way of the group. She had been operating, by that stage, for roughly 100 minutes, mounting what appeared at occasions to be a fearsome, one-woman marketing campaign to maintain South Africa within the World Cup for so long as attainable.

By that stage, even she would have conceded that it was over. The Netherlands had a two-goal lead, and someplace within the area of 30 seconds to outlive. But Kgatlana, as she had already amply proved on this match, doesn’t consider in stopping.

And so she picked up the ball, halfway contained in the Dutch half, and got down to “cause havoc,” as she put it, as soon as extra. First, she spun and writhed and twisted away from a defender, leaving her sprawled on the turf.

Then, her line of sight momentarily clear, she lined as much as shoot from 25 yards. Stefanie van der Gragt stepped in the way in which of the shot. It caught her sq. within the face. The ball’s altered trajectory might need taken it wherever. This time, it slithered simply broad of Daphne van Domselaar’s purpose.

It was that type of sport for South Africa, the type of event when any variety of issues might need gone ever so barely in a different way and an entire different world might need opened up. The Netherlands, ultimately, went by way of to the quarterfinals, the place Spain lies in wait in Wellington, New Zealand.

From the uncooked information of the sport, it may be tempting to imagine that conclusion was inevitable from the second Jill Roord, a yard from purpose, gently nudged the Dutch forward after simply 9 minutes. Largely due to Kgatlana, although, it didn’t really feel like that within the slightest.

At occasions, notably within the first half, she had appeared to take the thought of South Africa’s elimination as a private affront. She took the struggle to the Dutch nearly single-handedly, wresting management of the sport, changing into its central character, tormenting the defenders tasked with marking her, testing van Domselaar time and again and once more.

Kgatlana had already left an indelible mark on the match — and on South African soccer, for that matter — with the last-gasp purpose that had defeated Italy and introduced Desiree Ellis’s South Africa group right here, to a primary knockout sport within the nation’s soccer historical past. The circumstances wherein she had performed so, within the midst of intense private grief, had made it not only a World Cup underdog story, however a parable of the facility of putting up with dedication.

She was not, then, prone to go quietly. She would possibly, had issues solely been marginally, fractionally, microscopically totally different, have scored two or three or 4 within the opening part of the sport. Once, she rushed her end. Once, the ball didn’t fairly fall precisely when she might need favored. Twice, van Domselaar shot out a leg simply on the proper time. “The chances we created should have put us out of sight,” Ellis mentioned.

At no level, although, may the Dutch calm down: Kgatlana was all the time there, on the shoulder of 1 central defender or one other, lurking, ready, after which bursting by way of, panic following in her wake. “They did not know how to deal with us,” she mentioned. “The game plan they had at the start did not work. They had to sit down and think about how to change so they could handle us.”

Even after Lineth Beerensteyn doubled the Netherlands’ lead, her speculative effort squirming from Kaylin Swart’s grasp, the goalkeeper’s head bowing and coronary heart breaking as she turned to see it bobble over the road, there was no relaxation, no quarter.

The South Africans had solely had three days’ relaxation to arrange for this sport — together with journey from New Zealand, one thing that Kgatlana felt value the group — however even because the lactic acid rose and the legs began to ache, they saved coming. The solely factor that might cease Kgatlana, it turned out, was the ultimate whistle.

At that second, the Dutch gamers lifted their arms in jubilation and, in no small measure, reduction. Their hopes ended and their lungs emptied, a few of their South African counterparts sank to their knees. Kgatlana didn’t. She stayed standing, congratulating her opponents, commiserating her teammates.

She was upset, in fact, however she was proud, too. Not simply of how South Africa had performed right here, and of the take a look at that they had posed the Dutch — “If they believed they are better than us, we had to make them prove it on the field; we did that,” she mentioned — however of all that they had achieved during the last three weeks, too. South Africa’s keep may be over. But it has proven, in its time right here, that there isn’t a doubt the place it belongs.