http://football365.com/john_nicholson/0 ... 40,00.html
World Cup finals are rarely the pinnacle of a festival of football. There's too much at stake and if you look in the history books you'll see some real stinkers.
I didn't find Holland v Spain up there with some of the worst, even though listening to the 5live commentary, you'd have thought from Alan Green's general misanthropy that it was as interesting as watching someone making porridge.
Perversely, I love very defensive, negative games. They're to be enjoyed with a different bit of your brain to a 5-0 thrashing or the 4-3 last-minute winner-type games.
It's not football for the tourist, that's for sure, but seeing the Dutch bully Spain, press them hard and close down space was fascinating to me. It's all part of the art of football as much as fannying around a lot with the ball.
I also love a dirty game. Indeed, I badly miss a proper dirty game. It used to be one of the great joys of football. You don't want to see it every game but it used to be an important part of the texture of the game, so kicking, kung-fu and crunching tackles are all fine with me. Holland and to a lesser degree Spain delivered a fine feast of aggression. Mark Van Bommel's ability to hurt people consistently and not get sent off is an art-form in and of itself and I can't help but admire it somehow.
As Green and Ingham moaned about the quality of the game, they missed the point of what the Netherlands were trying to do. Had they played an open, attacking game, they'd have got creamed senseless by Spain. Yes, that would have been fun for the neutral but the Dutch don't owe 5live commentators or anyone else anything. They're there to win and win by any means possible. It wasn't some sort of gross, immoral attitude they took to the game, merely a pragmatic one born out of knowing exactly what would suppress Spain most successfully. I admire that.
The only way to play a side better than you is to stifle, foul, close down and generally get in their faces for as long as you can get away with it. Chances were that a World Cup final will be refereed more liberally because of the occasion, so they took full advantage of that; fair play to them, or rather, foul play to them.
And you know what? It would have bloody worked if Robben had done the job he was there to do and put the ball away. It all worked perfectly and it only failed due to Robben's inability to score from two gilt-edged chances. All Spain's fantastic football was rendered impotent after 15 minutes by the Dutch approach. That was a major achievement and there was much to admire about it.
And while we're talking about fouling, I would also rather the kick-in-the-chest-type foul to the snidey shirt-pull, the wrestling and the petty little fouls which seems so much more mincing somehow. Holland's fouling was much more old school and obvious, Spain's more niggling, petty and over-dramatic.
But in the court of public opinion, the Dutch have one major problem; Arjen Robben. The fact he runs with his arm out, as though he is holding a handbag, the fact he looks like a baby that has undergone some sort of terrible ageing process, the fact that he goes to ground on every occasion possible with a look of tortured anguish on his face that suggested he had just a red hot poker put up his fundament. Robben is one of those players whose side you want to lose just to spite him, no matter how good they are, no matter how much you like the other players. At least Van Bommel is a shamelessly nasty c**t; I quite admire that. Robben is just such a big tart; a once-in-a-generation monster, it's impossible for the neutral to want him to succeed. The fact that Holland failed largely due to his inability to score was ultimately very sweet.
While Spain was, across the tournament, as worthy a winner as any side, the Dutch showed the world how to play them. Maybe they were overly aggressive but clearly, Spain, despite all their mercurial talents, had few answers to being pressed high up the pitch, to being crowded out in midfield and roughed up a bit.
That was great to see and went some way to shutting up the more drooling members of the punditocracy and media for whom Spain could do no wrong; seeing them as some sort of indefatigable footballing gods. The Spain-love had got out of all proportion and had got to such an extreme that any Spanish close control or incisive pass was being described as though no-one else on the planet shared such skill; which isn't to decry their obvious quality at all, more to rate it with some perspective.
So given all of this, I was pleased with the result. Robben lost and Spain won but were made to look human. A fine end to a most enjoyable month of football I'd say.
The mancityfans.net football forum
The BEST FORUM in all the land and all the world
[/center]
