World Cup Semifinals Uruguay vs. Netherlands Tuesday, 2:30 pm Eastern – ESPN

World Cup Semifinals
Uruguay vs. Netherlands
Tuesday, 2:30 pm Eastern – ESPN

Uruguay and the Netherlands will meet on Tuesday in the World Cup semifinals betting with the Netherlands favored to advance to the final. The Netherlands upset Brazil in the quarterfinals and now must avoid overconfidence as they face Uruguay on Tuesday. The Netherlands has yet to lose a match in the World Cup but head coach Bert van Marwijk is warning his team not to overlook Uruguay.

The Netherlands is a -160 favorite at SBG Global.

Van Marwijk is reminding his team of what happened two years ago when the Netherlands was favored to become European champions and then lost in the quarterfinals. He doesn’t want his team overlooking Uruguay. On paper, it seems like the Netherlands should win this match without too much difficulty. The Netherlands won all eight of their qualifying matches and now they have won all five of their World Cup betting matches.

Uruguay was very fortunate to get past Ghana in the quarterfinals as they survived on a missed penalty kick after Luis Suarez was red-carded for a handball. The handball was worth it though as Ghana missed their penalty kick at the end of overtime sending the game to penalty kicks where Uruguay won 4-2. Uruguay will be without Suarez in this semifinal match against the Netherlands as he was suspended. Uruguay will also be without defender Jorge Ciro Fucile who is suspended and they might be without injured captain Diego Lugano and midfielder Nicolas Lodeiro. The Netherlands will be without defender Gregory van der Wiel and midfielder Nigel de Jong who are suspended.

For Uruguay to win this match they are going to need Diego Forlan to score. He is the one true scoring threat with Suarez out of the lineup. The Netherlands has a lot more scoring depth led by Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder.

The last seven World Cup finals odds have involved only five teams but that will change this year with the winner of this match between Uruguay and the Netherlands in the final. Only five teams since 1982, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, France and Italy have played in the World Cup. If the Netherlands wins this semifinal against Uruguay and Spain defeats Germany on Wednesday, there will be a first-time World Cup winner. The Netherlands played in the 1974 and 1978 final but lost both times. Uruguay has won the World Cup twice.

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The more I look into this game, the more I like the Netherlands:
Mathijsen will return after missing Fridays game vs Brazil. Ooijer will probably replaced by Boulahrouz and Heitinga will move on the right side to replace suspended de Wiel. De Zeeuw should replace de Jong in their defensive midfield. So quite some changes to the Dutch defense, but their should not be much of a downgrade since Heitinga played that position often before and de Zeeuw has played a good season for his club team this year. With Uruguay missing Lodeira (playmaker) and Suarez the Dutch defense should look pretty good, since the gap between Suarez and his backup Abreu is enormous. Suarez is faster, much more mobile and much more dangerous. With van Bommel, who played a great tournament so far, probably stalking Forlan for most of the game (you can also expect the Netherlands to double team Forlan quite often), URU should struggle offensively.
Defensively URU will probably get back their inside defender Godin, who will be much needed, especially if their captain Lugano really can't go. If Lugano is missing, I expect URU to struggle defensively since they played by far their worst game defensively after Lugano had to leave injured vs Ghana. What makes things even worse: Fucile will be out due to his 2nd yellow card and he wasn't only one of their best defensive players so far, but also defending on their left side. So with him being suspended URU has to replace a key player on the left side of their defense, which happens to be the side where Robben attacks for the Dutch and where the Netherlands run most of their attacks.
Under different circumstances I would give URU a shot to upset NED and take them at least to overtime, but if Fucile is joined by Lugano on the sidelines, NED should be heavy favorites to win this game (something like 2-0).

Another thing that might affect the outcome:
URU was well organised in their first 4 games, but looked horribly unorganised at times vs Ghana after Lugano left. Now they have to replace another defender (Fucile) and that formation hasn't played together often, so they might be lacking good team play.
Lugano was also their best defender against high balls and they gave up lots of great scoring opportunities to Ghana after high balls (f.e. corner kicks). This was even an area, where URU struggled before Lugano went out (f.e. Korea scored their tying goal vs URU after a high ball) and since NED scored both of their goals vs Brazil after standard situations, this might be another area where the Netherlands have an advantage over Uruguay.