2010 World Cup News and Analysis

It was hardly a spec­ta­cle to behold and failed to embody what some of us call “the beau­ti­ful game”, but it was a finale to the World Cup nonethe­less and hap­pily served up talk­ing points. The resound­ing feel­ing from foot­ball fans world­wide must be a sense of loss, regard­less of the final out­come. Before a World Cup final, or any cup final for that mat­ter, it is almost a curse to wish for an excit­ing match that will pro­vide some attrac­tive foot­ball. This game between Hol­land and Spain def­i­nitely had a cursed aspect to it, and was painful to watch at stages.

They may not have flown like Dutch­men, but they did fight like pirates, as the tone for the match was set as early as the 2^nd minute when a rash chal­lenge from Robin van Per­sie on Pedro saw the Dutch striker given a yel­low card. A flurry of yel­low cards ensued and by the 23^rd minute, three other play­ers had paved their way into the referee’s note­book for cyn­i­cal fouls. Dur­ing the open­ing stages, Span­ish play­ers were drawn into this back and for­ward sequence of cyn­i­cal play, col­lect­ing two yel­low cards for their actions. How­ever, as the game wore on, they com­fort­ably grew out of this and were out­played in the area of tac­ti­cal fouls by the Dutch.

It was dis­ap­point­ing to see the Dutch per­for­mance degen­er­ate to this level on a col­lec­tive basis. Before the final, cer­tain play­ers, namely Mark van Bom­mel and Nigel de Jong, had been prin­ci­pally charged with sti­fling oppo­nents’ play through foul­ing, but on a whole, Hol­land seemed to hap­pily adopt this respon­si­bil­ity as a team for the final.

Their inten­tions are com­mon­place in World foot­ball. Spe­cific play­ers on all teams are in charge of mark­ing key oppos­ing player out of the game or foul­ing oppo­nents while counter attacks still brew a safe dis­tance from their goal, and in Holland’s case they started off with under­stand­able inten­tions. From the start, the Nether­lands’ hold­ing mid­field­ers Mark van Bom­mel and Nigel de Jong pur­sued Xavi and Ini­esta higher up the pitch so as to pre­vent any flow or momen­tum build­ing in Span­ish attacks. Their exe­cu­tion, how­ever, was mostly dis­taste­ful, with exe­cu­tion being the appro­pri­ate word.

Van Bommel’s actions quickly got him a yel­low card after a late chal­lenge on the afore­men­tioned Xavi. His mid­field coun­ter­part, de Jong, soon after got him­self a yel­low card to his name for a ridicu­lous, bor­der­ing on inten­tional, kick to the chest of Xabi Alonso. One would have hoped that being rep­ri­manded for their indi­vid­ual offenses would have seen these two play­ers back away from the bor­der­line of the law, but the exces­sive tack­les con­tin­ued and ruined the spectacle.

Try­ing to focus on more pos­i­tive aspects of the game, the Span­ish con­tin­ued their habit­ual dom­i­nance of the game from the off and were deserved win­ners in the end. The first tac­ti­cal vic­tory went to their way as great off the ball move­ment from right-winger Pedro to a more cen­tral posi­tion dragged Nether­lands left-back Gio­vanni van Bron­ck­horst infield and cre­ated space for attack­ing Span­ish right-back Ser­gio Ramos. This move nearly led to the open­ing goal for Spain as Ramos was able to attack Dirk Kuyt and unleash a vicious cross across the face of goal that was luck­ily deflected away by Dutch defender John Heitinga.

The right wing offered a lot of joy for Spain as on the hour mark the intro­duc­tion of touch­line winger Jesús Navas gave Spain more width to their play, this time drag­ging van Bron­ck­horst right out to the touch­line. Even­tu­ally the pace of Navas forced Hol­land coach Bert van Mar­wijk into chang­ing his reliant cap­tain for Edson Braafheid to deal with the this speed.

Another key bat­tle on the field was fought out between Arjen Robben and Iker Casil­las. Robben was talked of as a pos­si­ble match win­ner for the Nether­lands, and admit­tedly he could have been. On two seper­ate occa­sions, the fly­ing Dutch­man found him­self one on one with Span­ish goal­keeper Casil­las. His first chance after latch­ing onto Wes­ley Sneijder’s through ball was the clear cut oppor­tu­nity, while the sec­ond nearly five min­utes later which saw Robben fend off Puyol excel­lently was another great chance for Hol­land to take the lead.

Credit must be given to Casil­las for the author­ity he showed over the two seper­ate sit­u­a­tions. In the first inci­dent, Casil­las delayed his dive and forced Robben to take the ini­tia­tive to shoot at goal, while for the sec­ond oppor­tu­nity he pre­vented Robben from drib­bling around him in what is usu­ally sec­ond nature to the winger. The sec­ond chance for Robben also por­trayed Casil­las for the great keeper that he is as he antic­i­pated the move­ment of Robben to calmly smother the ball.

After being so tac­ti­cally astute in the first half with his appli­ca­tion of Pedro, and then man­ag­ing to change that sys­tem so effec­tively in the sec­ond half to wreak even more havoc, Vicente del Bosque made yet another inspired sub­sti­tu­tion in the 87^th minute. His deci­sion to bring on Fab­re­gas for Alonso can be hailed as a match win­ning sub­sti­tu­tion that tipped the favour of the game towards the Span­ish in extra time.

With Fab­re­gas now on the pitch, Hol­land had an entirely new type of dynamic player to deal with. His late runs into the box and will­ing­ness to take the ball on around the penalty area offered some­thing dif­fer­ent to Alonso who stands off play. Hav­ing Fab­re­gas higher up the pitch, he was able to pick up a stray clear­ance from van der Vaart to set up Ini­esta for the win­ning goal.

It would be hard to end with­out lament­ing Spain for being waste­ful with their chances for the sev­enth game in a row. How­ever, they are World cham­pi­ons now, and although they may leave a bit too much to chance, every cham­pi­ons goes through their fair share of luck.

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