Holland v Spain - World Cup Final

[paultheroyal]

9 yellows for Dutch and 5 for Spain

[John Madejski's Wallet]

9 yellows for Dutch and 5 for Spain

Really?

I just looked and it seemed 7-5 (plus the 2nd yellow/red). Hey ho.

My point was more that the Spanish weren't wholly innocent, and should have ended up with 9 men themselves.
Mind you, when the Dutch fouled, they REALLY fouled!

[sandman]

Football is the winner despite what the kick and rush merchants who deride Spain as boring would have people believe.The Dutch were a complete disgrace in the first half and if they had won this tournament it would have been a bad victory for the game.

Webb was pretty poor imo, Given that one of his obligations is to protect the players and by not sending De Jong off for his Bruce Lee impression it gave the Dutch players free range to carry on with their shady tactics.

[cmonurz]

[Kitson12]

Webb was pretty poor imo, Given that one of his obligations is to protect the players and by not sending De Jong off for his Bruce Lee impression it gave the Dutch players free range to carry on with their shady tactics.

With regards to this I believe, from the footage, that Webb wasn't in the best position to see the foul. Otherwise I thought he had a really good game, considering the huge weight of the World Cup Final he did very well, and no way was it a foul on the Dutch player moments before the Spanish goal, not in a million years.

[sandman]

9 yellows for Dutch and 5 for Spain

Really?

I just looked and it seemed 7-5 (plus the 2nd yellow/red). Hey ho.

My point was more that the Spanish weren't wholly innocent, and should have ended up with 9 men themselves.
Mind you, when the Dutch fouled, they REALLY fouled!

Puyol could have been sent off but Robben shook him off and got a shot away. I don't know who the second player is that you wanted to be sent off.

[John Madejski's Wallet]

9 yellows for Dutch and 5 for Spain

Really?

I just looked and it seemed 7-5 (plus the 2nd yellow/red). Hey ho.

My point was more that the Spanish weren't wholly innocent, and should have ended up with 9 men themselves.
Mind you, when the Dutch fouled, they REALLY fouled!

Puyol could have been sent off but Robben shook him off and got a shot away. I don't know who the second player is that you wanted to be sent off.

Not wanted..... I thought Webb had a good game by not ending the match 7 vs 9!

Yes Robben stayed on his feet, but had he gone down (like he's done his entire career!), Puyol would have walked. And I don't think Robben did get a shot in btw

Iniesta, booked for taking his shirt off, but should have been booked early in 2nd half iirc for retaliating and taking out Dutch player off the ball....... (but then I think it was Van Bommell, so who could blame him!! )

[RoyalChicagoFC]

Did Spain Deserve to Win?

The best part of this match was that it ended before penalty kicks, where the Dutch could have squeezed out a win and enjoyed the fruits of their goonish performance. Simon Kuper wrote a great column in last week’s Financial Times, where he bemoaned how Holland had turned away from idealism in its football and in its politics. This performance should bury the myth of Dutch Total Football for good. I need to re-watch the 1994 final to be sure —and I won’t do that outside of an enhanced interrogation— but I think that this rates only a notch less turgid than that one.

This wasn’t one of the great triumphs in World Cup history, not by a mile. I’m not sure how much of this was truly Spain’s fault. They are the European Champions—and most [sic] of Spain’s players toil for Barcelona, the club team of the decade. Their opponents considered them unstoppable by conventional means, so they countered Spain’s passing with turgid defensive tactics, and, in Holland’s case, ugly fouling. Yet, in the face of all that, Spain never veered from its tika-taka identity. Spanish football is not boring, but when opponents deploy those kinds of tactics, you’ll look boring. I think this victory needs to be treated as a kind of lifetime achievement award for Spanish football. They have spent the past four years dominating the game, both at the club and international level. They have the best players in the world and produced the closest thing in recent memory to a new paradigm in tactics. The sum of Spain's achievements and play has no match. Their victory wasn’t great, but it was deserved.

[sandman]

Not wanted..... I thought Webb had a good game by not ending the match 7 vs 9!

Yes Robben stayed on his feet, but had he gone down (like he's done his entire career!), Puyol would have walked. And I don't think Robben did get a shot in btw

Iniesta, booked for taking his shirt off, but should have been booked early in 2nd half iirc for retaliating and taking out Dutch player off the ball....... (but then I think it was Van Bommell, so who could blame him!! )

Having seen it again your right he didn't get a shot in.

As for Iniesta, Van Bommel came in late and should have resulted in his second yellow. Iniesta retaliation was hardly deserving of a yellow though imo.

[Maguire]

I thought Webb did really well given how difficult the players made it for him. Poor decision not to award the corner from the deflected free kick but that's not much of a complaint in 120 mins of cynical football.

BRILLIANT tackle by De Jong though, amazing stuff.

[Archie's penalty]

What a turgid game of football that was. As with Ian I had to support the Dutch but boy they made it difficult. The only thing I really enjoyed were the fouls, the Dutch were horrendous, I knew they would kick the oxf*rd out of the Spanish, but the Spanish were also niggly and petulant.

I thought Robben's dash after Webb would have summed up the game until Iniesta's winner.

Hate the Spanish but Iniesta deserved it, he is the Spanish team, they play with no width and their strikers weren't important, so very apt he scored.

Congrats, begrudgingly, to the chicos and chicas...

[RoyalChicagoFC]

Had Howie & crew failed to turn up for the final

***dialogue NOT appropriate*** for sensitive work environments/impressionable young mouths that will be learning it elsewhere soon enough

[Nick Shorey my Lord!]

BRILLIANT tackle by De Jong though, amazing stuff.

I still can't believe he got away with that. The Dutch should have been done to 7 men. Jonny #1, De Jong #2. Schnieder somehow missed a 2nd booking along with Robben when he kicked the ball away. They nicked Uruguarys old book of tatics and it almost worked; How did you win the world cup? By kicking seven shades of shit out of the opponents.

Total football = / = Total fouling

How long is Torres out for? What a plum.

[Sun Tzu]

Iniesta, booked for taking his shirt off, but should have been booked early in 2nd half iirc for retaliating and taking out Dutch player off the ball....... (but then I think it was Van Bommell, so who could blame him!! )

Logic check ....

Had Iniesta been booked for the retaliation I rather suspect he'd have kept his shirt on when he scored...

Webb did well considering the cynical nature of the Dutch tactics.

He was right to not red card Robben, common sense refereeing. With every other card he had no option, a sad indictment of the tactics employed.

[Silver Fox]

If there's a cliche in football that I hate more than "Getting booked for celebrating a goal is really stupid" it's the claim that the game is best served by trying to keep it 11-a-side. Sure, you don't want to see a one-sided final but it's surely the responsibility of the players (and in this case the dutch coaching staff) to make sure you don't give the ref the opportunity to dish the cards. Webb clearly got a bunch of decisions wrong, although well done to him for finally sending someone off despite some on here thinking a running man tugged back and then released won't fall over, but it's harsh on him to say he had a bad game, he was more a victim of circumstances.

Another thing, anyone who was surprised at the Dutch tactics, did you not see the Brazil game? Had the ref in that one actually clamped down on their constant first half fouling we might have been spared last evening's scenes, either by the dutch not making it that far or at least them being taught a lesson.

[Tony Le Mesmer]

If we'd had full tv replays for contentious decisions in this game we'd still be playing now.

Im glad Spain won, because them aside the standard of football has been very poor in this World Cup.

[Sun Tzu]

If we'd had full tv replays for contentious decisions in this game we'd still be playing now.
.

And the ref would have been shown to be correct in most of them !!!

What did he get 'wrong' ? The goal kick awarded despite the double deflection ?

Plenty of others you could argue (like why he failed to complete the full house and book all 22 players !) but most would be matters of opinion or out of context of the game.

[jumpers for goalposts]

And that folks is why we have a huge shortage of qualified refs these days. Who would want the hiding to nothing that Webb received last night? The players behaved like spoilt brats, tackling appalingly badly, and diving, cheating and imploring the ref to dish out more cards when he had no intention of doing so. That was a shockingly awful advert for the game, and the end of a truly dull world cup, with few games of note.

Take nothing away from Spain though. technically excellent, and probably the best team in the tournament.

[Maguire]

If there's a cliche in football that I hate more than "Getting booked for celebrating a goal is really stupid" it's the claim that the game is best served by trying to keep it 11-a-side

Conversely, if the referee starts booking everything by the letter of the law and never uses his discretion then he'd be accused of ruining the biggest football match in the world, of being an attention-seeker, of thinking the game is all about him, of making a rod for his own back by booking players early in the game etc etc

So many decisions are open to intepretation that I don't think people can condemn his for eg. not sending off De Jong. I don't think I would have done either.

[Silver Fox]

I'm all for using a bit of common sense early doors and trying to manage the game sensibly but it seemed the Dutch were having none of it and I know you like it when things get a bit nawty but I can't think of any reason not to send of De Jong