Has the outcome of this week's World Cup championship game been foretold in lyric for almost 500 years? Here is a stanza from the Dutch national anthem:Nothing so moves my pityI am sticking with my pre-tournament pick of the Netherlands, but most of the smart money appears to be on Spain. I expect that the team that scores first will win, and I do think that the Dutch have a good chance to open up the Spanish defense in a way that Germany could not. If it goes to penalties, take the team that wins the coin toss and shoots/scores first. It could be a classic game. I'll go with 3-2 Holland, rather than 1-0 Spain!
As seeing through these lands,
Field, village, town and city
Pillaged by roving hands.
O that the Spaniards rape thee,
My Netherlands so sweet,
The thought of that does grip me
Causing my heart to bleed.
Hup Holland!!
20 comments:
I have been told that David Villa has been knighted as Duke of Alba for this week
Beating the Dutch will be but a first step in Spain reclaiming its rightful empire.
Spain surely has the edge, but the Dutch team showed it has eruptions no team can resist. It's like a summer thunderstorm, one moment it's peace and quiet and then suddenly it's all thunder and hell.
The damn octopus is going for Spain!
To think that the Dutch revolted against the spanish because of a "hefty" tax levy of 10%.
Remember Roger, the first goal in 1974 was a dutch one, yet we lost...
Holland lost both times in the world finals from the organising country, and South Africa is out of the game now!
Roger,
The 'damn octopus' may be going for Spain, but Mani the Psychic Singapore Parakeet is going for Holland. And Mani is a professional.
http://www.breakingfootballnews.com/world-cup/mani-the-singapore-psychi-parakeet-picks-netherlands-to-beat-spain-in-2010-world-cup-final/4636
Que Viva España
A por ellos, oo ee
A por ellos, oo ee
A por ellos, oo ee
A por ellos, ee oo ee
------
As for the Canadian fans of España there is this:
Alcohol
Alcohol
Alcohol alcohol alcohol
Hemos venido a emborracharnos
Y el resultado nos da igual
IPCC was right this time: due to climate change, orange trees in Africa may wilt very rapidly, as early as July 2010
The Spanish have scored 2 goals only once this whole tourney. It seems unlikely, but then if the Dutch score first, Spain will have to attack with more men. Which could in theory produce a 3-2 game.
Roger is correct that usually the team scoring first is the winner. For the Dutch to score first, they will have to pry the ball away from Spain's exceptional control, which has been very difficult throughout the tourney.
Great game today. Diego Forlan's goal one of the best, if not the best, of the Cup.
It is hard enough to pick the ball out of the air from a cross at the top of the box and put it on goal, with one touch. Harder still to put it top corner. If Forlan had merely put it top corner, the excellent German goalie likely would have saved it, he's big and had a good view.
But what Forlan actually did was something so sophisticated that very few soccer players actually do it: he shot the ball toward the ground, about ten feet in front of him. That downward shot freezes the goalie, because his instinctive act is to prepare for a low shot. When the shot actually bounces up into the top right corner of the net, the goalie has already reacted and cannot change to leap and stop the shot.
This goal of Forlan's may not look to the uninitiated to be as spectacular as, say, von Bronkhorst's excellent 30 yard bomb against Uruguay, but in fact it is much harder to do, not just in execution but in the split second of deciding how you are going to shoot the ball.
To repeat an earlier comment on a different post: Forlan is far and away the best player of this World Cup in my view. Nobody means as much to his team, nobody has scored so many great goals, and no one has not just scored great goals, but had excellent assists (such as his assist on Suarez's goal against S Korea).
I expect that the team that scores first will win
It's not much of a prediction. On average the better team scores first, in any football match, and then goes on to win.
Many predicted similarly for the Dutch-Brazil game. Oops!
It has possibly reached the point now that the 'damn octopus' is materially influencing the outcome of the match, psychologically, in the minds of the opponents.
España needs to incorporate the octopussy into its national flag.
A slightly disappointing end to an exceptional World Cup. The Dutch apparently decided that the first half should be used to intimidate and cause bodily harm to the Spanish. The foot to the chest of Alonso, by (if memory holds) de Jong? That's an automatic red card in almost any other game. But de Jong seemed to know that the ref wouldn't want to cede the game to the Spanish less than 30 minutes into the game, so he got away with it. Alonso ceased to be a factor after that, which was likely the point of the assault.
So I'm happy Spain won, despite once again profligately avoiding to score until the very end -- once again. And my respect for the Dutch has evaporated.
Tom G, de Jong is a thug. His coach was a coward for not pulling him for that cheap shot.
The Dutch apparently decided that the first half should be used to intimidate and cause bodily harm to the Spanish.
And? My question is why the Germans, after seeing how the Spaniards were holding the ball off them in the first half, didn't do the same.
The Dutch knew to let the Spaniards hold the ball would be deadly, so they countered it. For all the talk of the "beautiful game" it is hardly an unknown tactic.
Alonso ceased to be a factor after that, which was likely the point of the assault.
So you are bagging a tactic that worked?
Football is about winning. The side that wins gets the cup, not the side that plays the most beautiful football.
Incidentally, when Puyol held Robben back as he ran on goal, was that an acceptable tactic? Or does only the Dutch cheating count?
Mark, at least you admit that the Dutch had to cheat to have any chance to win.
For Mark (comment 15):
For what it is worth, when de Jong was not red carded for a flying foot to the chest -- which had absolutely nothing to do with soccer, or the location of the ball -- I said to my bar stool companions that the ref didn't want to make the Netherlands play a man down for 60 or more minutes, but that there would likely be make up calls in the second half to balance the gift he gave to the Dutch by not red carding de Jong.
I think Puyol holding Robben was a 50/50 call. If de Jong had been throw out, maybe the ref would have called it. As it was, he wasn't going to give the Dutch another gift.
Holding happens all the time, Mark, and it is clear from your comment that you understand this side of soccer. Whether it gets called has to do with many things -- how serious, where it happened, were you the last man, and so on.
I see no equivalence to flying into somebody's chest with your cleats, and the holding that is part of the game, but can't be too egregious without being called. Two different worlds.
If I could still play soccer, which I loved playing more than any other sport, I don't think I would today except at a senior level, given how this injurious type of play infiltrates down to the amateur level.
Mark - the tactic only worked because the referee did not do his job (rather like the English players). And the Dutch are sore losers with van Marwijk claiming he could not see any of the fouls his players committed.
Mark, at least you admit that the Dutch had to cheat to have any chance to win.
Both sides committed deliberate and professional fouls.
Puyol did not have to hold Robben back. He did it cynically to prevent a goal being scored, in the hope it was discrete enough to be missed. That he was not penalised does not stop it being cheating.
Iniesta writhed on the ground as if he had been taken to with an axe at one stage, after barely being clipped.
As it happens the rules of football are adjudicated such that if you step on a player you get a card. But diving and writhing go largely unpunished. Both are cheating. You cannot judge which side "cheated" more based on who was more physical.
So long as football remains a contact sport, there will be teams who take a physical approach. The risk they take is that they will have men sent off. The Dutch took this approach.
Frankly, I would rather that than the Italian or Portugese 2008 approach to winning via diving.
De Jong's attack was a shocker, and he should have seen red - would have in most other games. But to single that out as the only cynical act in the game is to miss all the other cheating.
To me this year's World Cup has been the year of the blatant cheater. Henry's hand ball to get there. Uruguay's hand ball on the line. Italy's dive against New Zealand. We've seen many players go down as if shot when replays show they weren't even touched.
I don't think I will regain my love of football until they introduce retrospective penalties for the gross cheating - diving, writhing as if shot when not touched, hand balls. As it stands the players might as well try.
To whine that one side is "cheating" because they are physical and not notice the rest is why I find the game so noxious at the moment. It's a contact sport.
Reiner G, I totally agree. The ref screwed up right from the start. He was thinking more about his own record of not having sent anyone off in the tournament than about getting a grip on the game. The very first tackle (or perhaps it was the first time the whistle was blown) would normally have warranted an instant red card but it didn't even get a yellow: a Dutch player rammed his studs into the back of a Spaniard's knee. By not giving that a red or a yellow, the ref held up a white: it's carte blanche for thuggery, lads. (I suspect that the ref's later card-frenzy was also driven by ego. Perhaps he hoped that, when memories of the game itself have faded, the bald statistics on how many cards were dished out would convince people that he can't have been too lenient.)
Best team of the World Cup: Germany.
Best game (apart from Germany's): Slovakia v Italy.
Best goal: The first (Tshabalala).
Best off-pitch moment: The Spanish goalkeeper kissing his journalist girlfriend during an interview. How sweet was that?
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