Strikers struggle for Dutch
SAO PAULO -- Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie ultimately came up empty-handed as the Netherlands ran out of steam in the World Cup semifinals.
How different to the start of the tournament, when the star forwards scored twice each and the Dutch soared to a memorable 5-1 victory over defending champion Spain to announce themselves as the team to watch in Brazil.
On Wednesday in a grinding 0-0 draw against Argentina, Robben had probably the best chance for the Dutch only for his goal-bound shot in injury time to be agonizingly blocked.
Van Persie, the Netherlands captain, didn't even make the ensuing penalty shootout. His World Cup ended as he was substituted in extra time, with Coach Louis van Gaal describing his lead striker as "exhausted."
Twitter record
It won't be what Brazil's fans will remember, but the first World Cup semifinal is the most tweeted-about sports event in Twitter history.
The social media company said there were 35.6 million tweets sent out during Germany's 7-1 rout of Brazil on Tuesday afternoon. That easily beat Twitter's previous record of 24.9 million set during the Super Bowl in February.
The most tweets came when shots were whipping by the Brazilian goaltender. Twitter says there was a flurry of more than 580,000 tweets per minute right after Germany's goal made it 5-0, the last of four goals to come in quick succession.
An estimated 12.4 million people watched the game on television in the United States, the Nielsen company said. That included 6.6 million who saw the game on ESPN, and 5.8 million who watched on the Spanish-language Univision network.
Toning it down
For Germany, Tuesday's victory was perhaps the most dominant performance in its long soccer history. But it was also so stunningly easy, the Germans basically stopped celebrating their goals when the score reached 4-1 to avoid embarrassing their hosts.
And the story afterward wasn't Germany's tour de force as much as it was Brazil's tour de farce.
"After losing the semifinal to Italy in 2006, we know how Brazil, the players and the fans feel," said German Coach Joachim Loew, who was an assistant to Juergen Klinsmann in that tournament in Germany. "So we have to be modest and humble and take the next step. The emotions are great. We won, we've made it to the final.
"But we couldn't have expected this result."
Toni Kroos, whose two goals and an assist early in the first half started the rout, was unbelieving as well.
"It was an impressive performance. It's the best team performance for Germany I've been involved in," he said. "Had someone said we'd have won 7-1, I wouldn't have believed them. We're happy and relieved to go through but there's still one game to go. No one has won the World Cup in a semifinal."
Sports on 07/10/2014