Louis van Gaal has been surprised at the transformation his Netherlands side has made from outsiders in Group B to among the favourites to win the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
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Alongside World Cup holders Spain and a highly rated Chile side, there was limited expectation that Van Gaal's young squad would progress.
But three wins out of three, including a 5-1 rout against Spain, and a late comeback to beat Mexico 2-1 in the round of 16 means that Netherlands will now face Costa Rica or Greece for a place in the semifinals.
Van Gaal has attributed Netherlands' success to the team spirit and morale within the squad and insisted they will not underestimate their quarterfinal opponents.
He told his postmatch news conference: "Let me tell you that the Dutch media never thought we would survive the first round, so how we ended up becoming a favourite, I don't believe it.
"This group of players are very modest and this path that we've embarked on will continue. I think we have an outstanding team spirit and atmosphere, and that has led to this victory.
"Whether it's Greece or Costa Rica, these are very difficult opponents to beat, otherwise they wouldn't have ended up in a quarterfinal."
Van Gaal also praised the tactical flexibility of his side after they changed the 3-5-2 formation which they started the match with, in order to exploit Mexico's line-up.
He said: "There's always food for thought for me. We will see what the best thing to do is. Today, it was an escape, but in the second half, we showed that we could create many more opportunities with 4-3-3 as well as with 'Plan B' because we played three formations.
"This is a big compliment to the players and they picked up on that immediately, but we saw this happening when we played Australia.
"In principle, what we do is play one against one. They had their right wing defender and left wing defender stay back and this was in our favour. It was easier for us to build up and have more ball possession in the second half but there was no goal.
"Then, we had a cooling break, which was when I could start with 'Plan B.' We trained this and I knew that we would have a cooling break. We would play with these long, deep balls. After equalising, I put Kuyt back and [Georginio] Wijnaldum back in the midfield and we played 4-3-3 again.
"At that point, we could find Robben very often because Mexico were running backwards and Robben forced the penalty."
Dirk Kuyt won his 100th cap against Mexico and praised their resilience in defence, while underlining the importance of the result for Netherlands.
He said: "It was an historical match. It's an historical tournament for us. To win it like this gives the team an amazing feeling.
"They were defensively very tough. We have a lot of respect for Mexico and it was very tough."