For Dutch, Dramatic Rally With a Theatrical Fall

Mexico's coach, Miguel Herrera, has become an icon during this World Cup for his impassioned exhortations in front of the team bench. Herrera has stomped and stamped, whirled and whipped, flailed and frothed over everything from referee decisions to near misses to, most notably, goals scored by his players. (Also read: Costa Rica enter quarters for first time)

Among the countless Internet tributes to Herrera is one delightful concoction in which Herrera's wild gesticulations result in a violent thunderstorm.

Deep into stoppage time on Sunday, though, Herrera finally stood still. At the far end of the field, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, a forward for the Netherlands, ran up and lashed a penalty kick into the net. As the Dutch bench erupted, Herrera only stared: His team had been just a few minutes from advancing to the quarterfinals. Instead, it is now going home, surely devastated, after a brutal 2-1 defeat. It is the sixth consecutive World Cup in which Mexico has been eliminated in the Round of 16. (Highlights)

Not surprisingly, Herrera did not leave quietly. In his postgame news conference, he excoriated the referee of the match for awarding the decisive penalty after Arjen Robben dribbled into the area and went down under a challenge from Mexico's captain, Rafael Marquez. (Matchcentre)

To Herrera - and, presumably, just about every Mexico fan at Estadio Castelao - Robben, who is known for embellishing, took a dive. The referee, Pedro Proenca of Portugal, saw otherwise.

"The penalty was an invented penalty," Herrera said. "Today, it was the man with the whistle who eliminated us from the World Cup."

He added, "Out of four matches, we had three matches where the refereeing was disastrous."

Herrera went on to question why the tournament committee had assigned Proenca - who is so well regarded that he worked both the Champions League final and the European Championship final in 2012 - to the game at all. Portugal, Herrera said, is Proenca's homeland and is in the same confederation as the Netherlands.

Herrera then called on FIFA, soccer's governing body, not to assign any more games to Proenca.

"We will leave tomorrow or the day after," he said. "We believe the referee should be going home, too."

It was an extended bit of petulance from Herrera, who did concede that his players were to blame for allowing the Netherlands an opening in the first place. Through three full games and 88 minutes on Sunday, El Tri had allowed just one goal. But loose defending after a late corner kick allowed Wesley Sneijder the freedom to blast a 20-yard shot past Guillermo Ochoa that tied the game at 1-1.

"The tension was unbelievable; I've never lived through anything like that," Daley Blind, a Dutch defender, said. "We couldn't find our men with our passes in the first half; we struggled to get to the ball. But we came back stronger in the second."

Sneijder's blast was the catalyst, and it must have felt like a sucker punch, too, if only because Mexico had taken the lead in such dramatic fashion. Giovani Dos Santos scored his first international goal in two years with a wicked shot from outside the penalty area just after halftime, and once the euphoria subsided, the Mexicans packed in and held off the Netherlands for so long.

By the time the final minutes arrived, Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal had already pulled his top scorer, Robin van Persie, because of fatigue, and it felt as if Ochoa were impenetrable. He stopped a close-range shot from Stefan de Vrij off a corner kick. He stymied Robben, the wily attacker, when he slipped in along the side and tried to sneak a shot through Ochoa's legs.

He even stopped a Huntelaar shot from about two yards out with a fantastic save, although the Dutch were ruled offside anyway.

All of it made the coda so cruel. Mexico had almost done it, had almost survived the Dutch attack and its own history and, perhaps most of all, the staggering conditions here. The game was played in stifling heat, and the midday sun made it seem as if many of the seats in the lower bowl of the stadium were unsold. In reality, most of the fans in sections where the sun was beating down had retreated to shade areas of the concourses.

The players received FIFA-mandated water breaks midway through both halves, a merciful exception to soccer's typically nonstop action but, on this day, also a talking point. Van Gaal said afterward that he took full advantage of the second-half cooling break, switching up his formation and using the stoppage to explain to his players precisely what changes he wanted to see.

"I moved to Plan B," van Gaal said. "That's a clever way of benefiting from these breaks."

His adjustments worked. With Dirk Kuyt and Huntelaar, who had fresh legs as a 76th-minute substitute, pushing forward, the Dutch played more long balls and tried to pressure the Mexican defense, which Herrera acknowledged was a bit naive in not stalling more to protect its lead.

The result was catastrophic for Mexico. First came Sneijder's lightning bolt that gave the Dutch hope. Then came Robben's dodging run along the end line and an outstretched leg from Marquez.

Marquez and the Mexicans protested. Robben said afterward that while he did dive once in the first half, the final call was legitimate. In the end, none of it mattered. Proenca pointed to the spot. Huntelaar converted. And Herrera, the largest character in this World Cup, barely moved.

© 2014 New York Times News Service