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

You're kidding, right? Because the 2 times they gave the ball back were their 2 dirtiest tricks of the whole match. What they did was utterly disgusting (it's not just me saying it, have a look at the international press).

Giving a ball back after a team has kicked it out to tend to an injured players shows no special fairplay. It is so normal that it is nearly an stablished rule. No team would dare not to do it.
Now, they are ways and ways to give the ball back.

The first time, the sent a tricky ball to Casillas trying to score from far away, and perfectly well knowing how tricky the Jabulani can be. You just have to remember the hateful look Casillas gave to the player who "gave back the ball" to be certain of it. Dirtiest trick I've ever seen in a football match.

The second time they gave back the ball was a bit less ugly, but also dirty. The spaniards had send the ball out midfield. The dutch gave it back nearly at the spanish corner with the intention of putting preassure on the spanish players and steal it as soon as they tried to play it. You also can see on video how Xavi argued about it with a dutch player and he shouts at him about his dirty trick.

So, thank you for mentioning that the dutch gave back the ball. Two beautiful examples of how their dirtiness went well beyond their criminal agressivity.

 

Gudula04> I agree with you on the ball Van Bommel kicked back near the Spanish corner flag. That was done on purpose and showed no class. I did not got the impression the other players were eager to take advantage and put much pressure, though.

I do think you are overreacting about that first kick back. Go figure: If you can not kick it back like they did, how should they have done it otherwise? From that distance it is normal to give it high. It wasn't a very tricky ball. Casillas just showed to be insecure at different moments. For example Vd Wiel's pass a cross the goal when he could easily get it up but decided to let it go. The fact Van Persie gave it back straight to Casillas from the following corner showed there was no intention to kick it in.

What gives you that impression? There was a critical article in one of the papers this morning, but at this exact moment a crowd of tens of thousand has gathered in Amsterdam to honour the squad.

 

Wow. What a great example of losing with dignity.

 

Actually let's get back to discussing the match, not bashing the Dutch for fouling or the Spanish for diving.

 

There are comprehensive match stats on Stattoz.

There are individual stats on all Spanish players.

There is a comparative table of the two teams' stats.

 

Apparently, everyone but the dutch watched a different gamee.This is a collection of what the international press said. Excuse me for some crappy translations.
Italian press:
.The triumph of beauty

.Thugs vs. dancers
.If the Netherlands had won, FIFA should have had to apologize

Argentinian press:
.A champion to imitate, without lies or pettiness
.If Argentina had played like Holland, we should had been banned for two World Cups.
.If Holland had won it would have been a scandal. SInce Spain won, football was the winner

German press:
.Brutal Netherlands
.We hope other national teams won't follow dutch example when trying to neutralize Spain
. Eficiency, elegance, fascinating attacking football by the spaniards

British press:
.Beauty beats the Beast
.the Dutch were the villains of the piece, something that Van Marwijk, who confronted the referee after the game, seemed unwilling to accept
.The losers were overwhelmingly the guiltier party
.If Webb had been on duty with the South Yorkshire police he’d have arrested de Jong — it wasn’t a challenge, it was assault.
.There were only three players from the Holland starting line-up who were not cautioned: Stekelenburg, Dirk Kuyt and Sneijder. Whatever sanctions may lie ahead, Spain at least punished them by claiming the World Cup.
.Dutch thugs soil football
.A Dutch victory would had been an insult.
.Beauty was rewarded in the end

French press:
. In the 1st half the dutch controlled La Roja thanks to the referee complicity.
.Webb allowed dutch's dirty play
. The dutch corrupted the game with their fouls and anti-footfall actions.
.Van Bommel, intolerable butcher. Violent and tricky, as usual, he simbolises the playstyle of his team last Sunday
.Knowing their team was inferior, they decided to destroy the beautiful Spanish style by trying to rot the game. The good news is they didn’t succeed.

Southafrican press:
.Spanish artists beat Dutch thugs
.In the end, flair won out over brute force, which should make soccer lovers everywhere very, very happy (unless they have a particular fondness for the colour orange).

USA press:
.The team that invented Total Football resorted to total foul... A team that once epitomized class stooped to crass, playing a cynical, foul-plagued, borderline dirty game.


Russian press:
- The dutch can only cry over their own dirty game.
-The rain of violent fouls on the spaniars looked like a attempt of assassination.


And, of course, Johan Cruiff:
'Sadly, they played very dirty. So much so that they should have been down to nine immediately, then they made two (such) ugly and hard tackles that even I felt the damage.
'Holland chose an ugly path to aim for the title. This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style, yes it served the Dutch to unsettle Spain. If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they ended up losing. They were playing anti-football.'

 

thats because diving has become normal in football these days and a physical game has become rare.

 

since you like to bash on "the dutch" for no apparent reason, allow me to point out the errors/flaws in your posts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund

 

You're using Wikipedia as a reliable source of information? Your "no apparent reason" is hillarious enough. Please, drop it.

 

Actually I believe the game ended when Van Persie committed that first foul with yellow. The game was quite ok until that moment. After that it was just a barrage of dirty tackles and very little football. It was a cruel display of football. Thank God it didn't go to penalties.

 

Great work, and of course, true. It would be difficult for anyone who loves the sport to have rooted for the Dutch. Ignore the annoying sore losers who simply won't accept reality.

Hey, here's one for you.
Question: How good was the security effort in South Africa?
Answer: So good that the 6 most serious crimes committed against foreigners were all the work of van Bommel.

 

this...

 

Gudula, you are clearly on a crusade. I won't deny you have a point when it comes to the likes of Van Bommel and De Jong because it was a disgrace what they showed last sunday. But please explain how the rest of the squad is responsible for these actions? De Jong and Van Bommel's yellow wasn't justified because it should have been red, but Van der Wiel's and Van Bronckhorst's yellow wasn't justified because it shouldn't have been a card at all. Still, part of your anti-Dutch argumention rests on the fact that almost the entire line-up was booked.

About the criticism in the Netherlands, I agree it should be more fierce. Like I posted before (a post that, by the way, included another comment on your previous post that you systematically ignored) there is some criticism.

 

do you know how wikipedia works? they use references, click on those references or go directly to www.imf.org so you can check for yourself

 

I have seen it happen once in the Dutch cup. I hope they would have let Spain score had Casillas let it slip. I really can not imagine that you want to win the World Cup with a goal like that. But the question here is not whether what they would have done had it went in, but if it was an attempt to score. Off course we can not look inside a player's head, but aren't balls like that always given back like they did? A high ball from that distance seems normal to me. It did not look very dangerous until Casillas let it go.

Still you imply the whole team behaved just like Van Bommel and De Jong. Some examples please, because I don't understand where you have seen dirtyness besides Van Bommel and De Jong. Robben overreacted when running at Webb after being hold by Puyol and Sneijder attacked the referee after the game. I understand why you regard this to be annoying and unworthy behaviour for a team playing the biggest match in the sport, but I don't think it should be called dirty. Van Persie's challange can be booked, but it's certainly not more than a yellow, so he got what he deserved.

I won't call the Spanish divers, especially since Van Bommel acted like he was kicked in the head when slightly touched by Iniesta. But one yellow was the result of a dive: Van der Wiel did not touch Iniesta when the latter was going down.

 

Cruoninga,

Forget it man, you're not going to convince anyone. The world has made up it's mind: The Netherlands are the worst team in the history of the world cup.

Never mind Italy or Germany stinking up international football for decades. Forget about the countless times we played the naive attacking footy the world loved, while everyone else (with the exception of Brazil) tried to bore their opponents into submission.

No, this one match is what defines Dutch football, all of our players and the country. In fact, we should ask the fifa to ban us from international competition. It's what we deserve after forgetting what we're here for:

amusing the planet....

 

This is exactly what the Brazilians were saying *before* the World Cup. And they got no further than the "magic quartet" did last time. I feel sorry for Brazilian and Netherlands fans, but your managers' looked down their noses at more "naive" sides in their history, and then failed to better their results! They are justly criticized, and Dunga is already gone.

 

What did you expect football fans to do?Sit back and accept that karate kicks and on field assault is part of football?

On a positive note you managed to stop Spain for over 90mins with that tactic so it WORKED BUT THERE IS A PRICE TO PAY for using those tactics,you're going to get ALOT of yellow cards and every neutral football fan will hate you just like if you played dirty in any other sport,this is not a big mystery or a conspiracy just learn to accept the consequences.

But as a Dutch fan would you be happy with WINNING in a such a manner?If not then your anger needs to be directed elsewhere,if you're fine with it then you know the consqeuences.

You can't have it both ways.

 

While I remain desperately disappointed with the final defeat (there are many "what ifs"), I agree of course that Spain were the deserved winners and that Holland were very lucky to escape more red cards.

I know for a fact that I would have felt physically ill for a long time to come had one of the following horror scenarios come to pass:

- Holland dominate the play, and miss a ridiculous number of huge chances, yet still lose
- Holland go ahead only to blow the lead in injury time, and then lose in extra time or penalties
- A penalty shootout loss wherein Holland has "match point" (e.g. John Terry in 2008 CL final) only for them to miss and then lose later on

For the last one in particular, I seriously doubt I would have been able to function for goodness knows how long! Knowing our painful WC final history could have been ended with one penalty only for it to be missed...

Fortunately none of these scenarios became reality, and it will be considerably easier for me to overcome the disappointment. Well done Spain, hope we can come back strong in 2014!

Edit: Oh and I'm proud of Holland for reaching this far - I certainly think they deserve their boat tour and "huldiging" today, however rough they may have played in the final.

 

It wasn't just this "one match", but rather how the Dutch played throughout the tournament. They just went from horribly boring to horridly thuggish as the tournament went along and some their opponents became stronger.

 

Up until the final, I thought that Holland had done a decent job (as much as can be expected playing Von Brommel and De Jong) in making me forget the aweful display with Portugal from the last WC. Unfortunately, the performance in the final overshadowed the good points of the tournament.

Still, you should be proud that a nation of your size was able to make it to the final. Congratulations...

 

To any fairly well seasoned football observer, it was quite obvious that the Dutch had clearly opted to use excessive physical contacts from the very beginning to not only disrupt the flow of Spanish football BUT with clear intention of forcing the Spaniards into early substitution due to injuries. The very first foul committed by a forward (Van Persie) with 53 seconds into the game near the opponent's box wasn't just the case of jitters. Looking back at that foul, one could see the approach the Dutch had taken to this game. I strongly believe if Webb had carded Persie that very first minute, he would have sent a clear message to BOTH teams that he wasn't going to tolerate thuggishness but he let it go. A world class ref. should have been more vigilant but he acted way too casual; even if he wanted not to start the game with handing out the card, he should have pulled Persie to the side and make it clear that the next one will be straight RED. IMO, the game got away after the first 10 minutes, and once he missed/refused to give straight red to De Jong, the Dutch felt pretty good and confident about their game plan (thuggish football).

 

Maybe it's time to go back to the match.

I'm Spanish, I've just looked the match again.

I'll try to describe how I've seen the game without talking about the referee. I will assume that he just wanted to keep everybody in the match, and offer the world a good match that only can be seen once every 4 years.

Spain started quite good, the chance of Ramos, and another one. Then the match goes a little bit hard. All we know... lot's of faults and no game.
This disturbs Spain, and Holland controls more the ball. I think Holland played too much with his keeper, and he only tryied to make long passes to Robben or Van Persie.
Spain ends the half recovering a little bit of his pace.

On the second half Spains goes for the goal, the legs are tired and they leave more space between Busquets, Xabi Alonso and the defenders, then appears the chances for Holland, counters using the speed of Robben. I wish Torres had arrived to this WC in good shape. Is the fastest in Spain, the only who could rival with the incredible speed of Robben.

When the match entered the second period of the extra time, It seem that Holland wants to go to PK. And then the goal.

After seeing the match again, Neither of the temas played at his levels. Xavi didn't risk, the most part of his passes were easy. This made easier to defend to Holland. The Dutch didn't manage to retain the ball and Van Persie dissapeared.

If you try to see the match without looking at the ref. You can enjoy of a few great moments, the counters of Robben almost scared all the country!
And at the end, this is football, and there is always a loser.

Sergio Ramos went at the end of the match to the dressing room of Holland, to talk and give his support to Robben, Sneijder and Van der Vaart. If the players can end the match and be friends after a very hard game like that, I think that everybody has to learn a lesson from them.

I hope to live another great WC like this another time. And it would be wonderful to face again against Holland, because I'm sure that as Germany did from the EuroCup, they will learn from this defeat and they would be a better team, because they have great players.