Match 64 (Final) - Netherlands v Spain - Post-Match Thread [R]

Congrats to Spain.

I am slightly confused though. I thought the team that can best dive through the midfield will win this year. But in fact the team with the most stable midfield won.

 

Gullit tells it like it is...the match sucked. I like him better as a commentator than a MLS coach.

Still, it is what it is...the final of a championship. You can't expect artistry. We can all jump for joy the day we get a sensational final in any tournament and it does happen every now and then.

Congrats to Spain.
Congrats to South Africa...hope you find something to do with those new stadiums.

 

The 'Fishy' part is the goal kick given to Spain that allowed Spain to setup and send the ball down field which led to the goal. That was an obvious corner that the Netherlands should have had off the free kick. Not saying they would have scored if given the corner but it would have changed the outcome and likely would have sent the game to PKs.

Still an awful game to watch. I don't think either team is playing attractive football. Whether or not they deserve it could be argued many different ways.

 

Why are people bringing the ref everytime? Robben had 2 clear chances to score and didn't.

 

lol so much Spain hate btw i think you forgot De Jong's "This is Sparta Kick" seriously guy should've been in the movie "Undisputed 3"

 

hey guys , remember this guy , he tried to touch the cup

 

Oh well, it was a crappy game and I don´t really care who won it...nevertheless it´s always nice to see those fine young men lifting the trophy and cheering. And of course grats to their fans who will be celebrating the whole night through...enjoy it

 

Does anyone else question Heitinga getting sent off? Shame the ref was one of the major talking points. He wanted to be in the limelight and I was worried his call might decide the game.

Congrats to Spain, they played the best soccer over the last few years.

 

No, no, no. You all dont know about the secret conspiracy by FIFA for Spain to win it all. FIFA loves that Spain's national unemployment is 40 percent and all the money that they contribute to football and the huge TV rating from all the Spaniards watching the final in hollywood and all the revenue money from Spanish advertisers. It's a huge conspiracy. They made the Dutch players hack the Spain players....don't you all get it? Spain is the biggest country in the world with the biggest economy...it only makes sense for FIFA to want them to win it all.

 

Congratulations Spain! World cup champions for the first time ever. Hard luck Holland - officially now the greatest team never to have won. I don't agree with a lot of the posters who are saying Spain don't deserve this, so who did? Spain controlled and were the better team in all the games they played and the better team tonight. They kept and passed the ball better than anyone else in this tournament and deservedly won. With a fit Torres they probably would've scored more.

 

eau contraire - the best team won - the game could have ended with multiple players being sent off - Webb did the best he could ... De Jong (the thug) should have been sent off with a straight red but Webb was trying not to be the story of the final. Had Holland decided to try to play them straight up it would have been prettier - but they decided they had to try to get physical with Spain to slow them down - so it was not going to be a pleasant to match to watch. Robben had two good chances and he botched them .... Iniesta buries his chance. You may think it is boring but they make the ball do the work (pretty intelligent play) and tire out opponents ... they are the most technically skilled team in the world.

Yes it should have been a free kick for Robben and possibly a yellow on Puyol. Yes it was a foul on Heitinga and a yellow (his second yellow so he had to go) .... Heitinga tugs Iniesta from behind on a breakaway - according to ref rules that is a yellow.

But those fouls did not determine the outcome of the match ....

It was tense because the mountain of pressure on players as the final match and because neither country won the trophy before.

 

Not at all. The Dutch were playing the professional foul game the entire time. Heitinga put himself in this position where any questionable foul could get him sent off. In fact the Dutch had what, 6 or 8 guys on yellows? It was time for the ref to punish the team for persistent infringement. Heitinga was just the guy who took it one step too far, but it could have been any of those players.

 

Yeah.

 

40% unemployment?

Wow... that sounds even worse than here.

 

The first one he should of put away, on the second one he was clearly fouled by Puyol but didn't take a dive. He probably regrets that now .

 

Grats Spain with your first world title!!You were the best side tonight. in fact i switched off my tv and went to do some other stuff after i saw the filthy foul by De Jong. When i came back it was the 2nd part of added extra time. Didn't look particularly entertaining thought it would go into penalties, (which almost by default we lose, no surprise there). No doubt that goal in the AET was somewhat a result of the red card earlier for Heitinga, but then again, when you play rough, you should also face the consequences, and they smacked our team on the buttocks for once.

Dunno why i read so many heated reactions here, You should be applauding a great team of mostly small people that won their way to the cup by playing , maybe not very attractive football, but technically very good nonetheless. Was the ref dubious? who cares. in the end the best team on this WC prevailed.

*sigh* now we'll be sulking again about always ending 2nd....like Joop Zoetemelk in the tour de france. I hope, if there's a new coach soon, he won't select Van Bommel or De Jong anymore. Or at least up the standards of the fouls allowed. Those two guys ruin our fairly decent fair play rep that's built up from ages ago.(which is worse than losing a cup-final imo)

PS; glad to see the disgruntled Brazil fans still lurking around trying to kick a team when they're down. To you i say, Happy inferiority for 4 more years. Good luck in 2014. Oh wait you don't need that....

Enjoy the party.

 

The Dutch deserved to lose more in the end . . . . and justice was served. Nigel "Ninja" de Jong ought to have been sent to the showers for his Mortal Kombat special finishing move. But at any rate when both wide defenders and both defensive mids picked up yellows (Heitinga, van Bronkhorst, de Jong, van Bommel) it seemed only a matter of time before the Dutch went down to 10 men. They played it like a chess game: sacrifice pawns by taking cards on hard fouls or simply chopping up flow of the play. Indeed the red came late, with just enough time for Spain to break through.

It's hard to blame Spain in this scenario. If they over-commit, the Dutch will punish on the counter, which they nearly did thru Robben. If they play a balanced game, they can't penetrate because attacks at speed are ended by tactical fouls. I thought the ref called a good, fair game all in all today, but he simply couldn't punish the cynical fouling tactics within the rules. If he lets the play go, players get away with the fouls and tempers soon escalate. So he whistles to card the foul, which of course is what the players want. People become indignant over the Suarez handball, but the persistent fouling in this game was ten times worse as it was a premeditated tactic, not a dire gesture to survive.

I'd love to see FIFA address this issue, but of course Septic Bladder will say that it is beyond his control. That is a lie, of course, as rules can easily be adapted to increase punishment. Make a player sit for 10 minutes if he commits a tactical foul, for example.

 

I'd prefer consistency. If you call it on one team, then call it on the other.

Anyway, if it had gone to PKs, I think Spain would anyways. And, as a neutral, I really don't care who won. I just think the WAY it played out was extremely disappointing.

My opinion is that when you add up all Webb's calls/non-calls, his mistakes favored Spain and his terrible blunder in not giving the Dutch that last corner kick DIRECTLY influenced the outcome.

Of course, apologists for Spain will say that the blown corner kick call didn't matter and that all the Dutch (particularly de Jong) should have been sent off for hacking and all apologists for the Dutch will say that if Puyols is correctly sent off for grabbing Robbens on the second 1v1 with Casillas and all the Spaniards were sent off for their hacks and dives, the Dutch would have won. So there ya go.

 

I am so sick and tired of De Jong - the US needs to schedule a friendly and go after him for the sake of all the other national teams in the world. He is a disgrace to the sport.

 

Yes..Spain is far from a rich county. A great country that I got to live in for 8 months...but far from rich. That's why I find it laughable when people say the fix was in for Spain...FIFA has nothing to gain with Spain winning. Brazil? Yes...England? Yes...the USA? Hell yes. But not Spain.

 

In 2006-
-Italy concedes a non existent penalty
- Luca Toni later has a valid goal disallowed for "off sides"

Blatter does not show up to trophy presentation because he was mad about the result...

i bet he wouldn't have shown up tonight if holland had won

 

If this game was fixed then why wasn't De Jong sent off in the first half for what was obviously a straight red situation for his karate kick in the chest. Or was that all part of the show to trick us in your conspiracy hypothesis? If this was a fix then Webb did a shite job, the Dutch came close more than a couple of times to scoring, or maybe Robben and company were paid off by FIFA as well?

This game was full of incompetence, Holland for playing so negatively from the beginning and trying to hack their way to a trophy, Spain trying to counter the Dutch tactic by diving on occasion and not creating, and Webb not getting control of this game, all I saw him do was stop the flow of the game to often not calling advantage, carding when he shouldn't have and not carding when he should have.

The only word that describes this game is UGLY.

 

Well played game,not the results I wanted but can live with.We had our chances. Spain are the champions! Overall a good WC. Good games to watch.

 

this is such a ridiculous argument. The red card against Chile came when Spain were already 2-0 up + Ponce should have been sent off earlier. The red card against Portugal came in injury time when the game was already done and dusted. The red card against Holland was deep in extra time after Spain had dominated for most of the game and was fully deserved, especially considering De Jong's earlier challenge.