As far as group stages go, the Netherlands will be pleased with their efforts so far, seemingly playing in second gear and managing to win all three games.
The opener against Denamrk was dull and required a bit of luck when a Daniel Agger own-goal opened the scoring. Afterwards, they were the only ones able to defeat a hard-working Japan side, eventually breaking them down with a Wesley Sneijder strike. Finally, a relatively meaningless match against Cameroon saw Robin van Persie and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar find the net, but more importantly winger Arjen Robben make a successful return from the sidelines.
Now it's time for coach Bert van Marwijk and his squad to hit top gear. The Dutch have typically been known as underachievers at the World Cup and can't afford any mistakes now. If they can play to their potential, Slovakia will fall by the wayside and the Oranje camp will be in excellent shape ahead of a potential quarter-final clash with Brazil or Chile.
Van Persie knows this better than anyone:
"Hopefully this will be our year, but we have to show now that we learned from the last two or three tournaments. Most of our guys have two, three or even four tournaments in their legs so hopefully we can show now that we learned from that. I do believe that we can win it, but we still need to do it.
"The match against Slovakia will be a tough game, very tough. I saw bits and pieces of their game earlier on and for them to beat Italy like that, it is unbelievable, so we need to be really sharp."
Slovakia Slay The Giant
After their opening two matches, in which they were extremely disappointing against New Zealand and Paraguay in Group F, no one gave Slovakia a chance against the world champions, even if Italy had not been up to scratch themselves. Nonetheless, the players finally clicked in unison and engineered one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history as they advanced to the second round and eliminated the 2006 winners in the process.Goal.com's Marcus Haydon described it as a "miracle".
They key pieces finally did their job. Centre-back Martin Skrtel was solid and decisive, playmaker Marek Hamsik's runs and passes caused problems, and Robert Vittek is in a rich vein of form in front of goal. The Slovakians will have to do even better than they did against the Azzurri to best the Netherlands.
On Monday, It will depend which Slovakia show up. Will it be the one who were abject against the All Whites and the South Americans or the team that shocked one of them ost successsful World Cup nations of all time?
Realistically, few will expect that coach Vladimir Weiss and his team could repeat the trick, but with the massive boost of confidence, they could provide a stern test.
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