AM­S­TER­DAM–Hun­dreds of thou­sands of fans lined Am­s­ter­dam's web of canals to cheer the World Cup run­ner-up Nether­lands as the team cruised the wa­ter­ways, swig­ging beer and blow­ing vu­vuze­las, in an open-top boat yes­ter­day. Look­ing to have fi­nal­ly shak­en off the dis­ap­point­ment of the team's third sec­ond-place World Cup fin­ish, the play­ers drank beer and waved at fans as or­ange stream­ers, fired from can­nons along the canal, drift­ed over them.

Mid­field­er Rafael van der Vaart sprayed fans with beer while de­fend­er Ed­son Braafheid caught a bot­tle of beer tossed to him by a fan and start­ed drink­ing from it. Play­ers had to reg­u­lar­ly duck as their boat cruised un­der low bridges. "I ex­pect­ed some peo­ple to come, but this is un­be­liev­able," coach Bert van Mar­wijk said. "Can you imag­ine what it would have been like if we'd won?" Scores of small boats, most of them pump­ing out loud mu­sic and packed with danc­ing rev­el­ers, fol­lowed the of­fi­cial flotil­la. In front of about 100,000 fans at the cen­tral Mu­se­um Square, winger Ar­jen Robben said: "Spain may have won the World Cup, but we have the best sup­port­ers in the world."

Be­fore the team boat ar­rived, sev­er­al fans leapt in­to the murky wa­ters of the Brouw­ers­gracht canal cheered by hoards of or­ange-clad, flag-wav­ing sup­port­ers–de­spite warn­ings from au­thor­i­ties that swim­ming in the canals could ex­pose them to any­thing from E. coli bac­te­ria to sunken bi­cy­cles and shop­ping carts. Ear­li­er, the team was hon­ored by Prime Min­is­ter Jan Pe­ter Balke­nende at the start of a hec­tic day of cel­e­bra­tions. Un­der bunch­es of or­ange bal­loons, Van Mar­wijk and re­tir­ing cap­tain Gio­van­ni van Bron­ck­horst were giv­en the hon­orary ti­tle of "Knight in the Or­der of Oran­je Nas­sau" at a re­cep­tion in front of Balke­nende's of­fi­cial Cat­shuis res­i­dence.

The team then was dri­ven by coach to meet Queen Beat­rix at her No­ordeinde Palace in The Hague be­fore an Air Force he­li­copter whisked the team to Am­s­ter­dam for its boat tour and an open-air par­ty at Mu­se­um Square, where fans had watched the ac­tion from South Africa on gi­ant screens through­out the tour­na­ment. Am­s­ter­dam po­lice tweet­ed that 500,000 peo­ple had de­scend­ed on the city to cel­e­brate the Nether­lands' best World Cup fin­ish since 1978. There were no im­me­di­ate re­ports of any prob­lems among the fans, who quick­ly dis­persed from the canals af­ter the team boat had passed. Or­ange-clad sup­port­ers be­gan pour­ing in­to the grassy square, flanked on two sides by the Rijksmu­se­um and Van Gogh Mu­se­um, hours be­fore the par­ty's sched­uled 5 pm (1500 GMT) start.

Se­cu­ri­ty staff were post­ed next to a hand­ful of house boats along the route in an ef­fort to pre­vent fans clam­ber­ing on­to their roofs. When the Nether­lands won its on­ly in­ter­na­tion­al ti­tle, the 1988 Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­onship, sev­er­al house boats were bad­ly dam­aged and a few sank amid wild scenes of ju­bi­la­tion. The Dutch lost 1-0 in ex­tra time to Spain in Sun­day's fi­nal–the third time the coun­try has lost the fi­nal af­ter de­feats in 1974 and '78. Eight Dutch­men were booked and de­fend­er John Heitin­ga was sent off in an ill-tem­pered fi­nal in Jo­han­nes­burg, where five Spain play­ers were al­so booked. Robben said his missed chance on the hour mark was still haunt­ing him. The Bay­ern Mu­nich star had on­ly Ik­er Casil­las to beat, but the Spain goal­keep­er de­flect­ed Robben's shot wide with his out­stretched foot.