The Morning After: Five Thoughts

Posted on July 12, 2010

Discuss it with Asif on Twitter.

A final not meant for casuals

Those who tune in to watch football once every four years for the World Cup Final were shocked and disappointed by the display between the Netherlands and Spain yesterday.

Andres Iniesta runs to celebrate his extra time goal in the World Cup Final, while Joris Mathijsen can't believe the Dutch misfortune. (Getty)

The brutal tactics employed by the Dutch was antithetical to the sport and muted any chance of Spain playing the free flowing football that those who watch them closely have come to expect.

This is what happens in a cup final. The less talented team will look to muck up the affair. Be it with malicious tackles, finishing their challenges by stepping on toes or kicking at heels, virtually anything they can get away with will be used to stifle the better team’s creativity. 

The final is usually the least pleasing to the eyes, unless both teams are equal in talent.

Negative tactics such as what the Dutch used to destroy any chance of inventiveness is a part of the game and can be effective in a one-off situation.  Coach Bert van Marwijk makes no apologies for it, but the Dutch media wants some answers.

Best way to avoid this kind of a surprise if you are a neutral is by watching football regularly. Getting the measure of it from a singular match of desperate importance is virtually impossible because one team will often play to win, the other goes out not to lose.

Fly-by-night entertainment happens at casinos. Football lives within those who absorb it.   

Thankfully, the better team won and it was redemption for Andres Iniesta. The Barcelona midfielder was kicked every which way on the pitch throughout the 116 minutes before scoring his game winner for Spain with four minutes remaining in extra time.


Howard Webb

With almost fundamentalist zeal, referee Howard Webb let the match go into the realms of the ridiculous on Sunday in Johannesburg. 

When Nigel de Jong drop kicked Xabi Alonso while the Spaniard was in mid-air at the 28th minute, Webb should have had enough. In the previous 15-20 minutes the Dutch decided to foul tactically and force the Spaniards out of their flow by kicking at anything wearing a dark blue shirt inside Soccer City.  

Instead of the straight red card as it should have been, Webb only cautioned the Manchester City midfielder, allowing the madness to spill over into the remaining hour and extra time.

Prior to the match Webb was adamant that he didn’t want the spotlight to be on him at the Final. By shying away from making the right decision when it mattered most – which would have been to exile de Jong to the dressing room and force Holland to play football – Webb had to continue to tolerate the Dutch excess and subsequent Spanish response.


Puyol should have been sent off

This Nigel de Jong kick to Xabi Alonso's chest at the 28th minute could have been called more severely by referee Howard Webb. (Getty)

Yes, when Arjen Robben was on his second breakaway (he was stopped by Iker Casillas’ leg in the first), he was impeded by Carles Puyol.

Shockingly, Robben didn’t go down, possibly knowing that his reputation as a diver would have worked against him if he had. Regardless, Puyol should have picked up his second yellow card on the missed foul and been sent off.

However, if we are working with hypothetical red cards, this situation might not have ever come to being had Webb sent off at least de Jong for his assault on Alonso and possibly Mark van Bommel for sweeping Iniesta’s leg at the 22nd minute.  Both de Jong and van Bommel were out to cripple Spain’s influential midfielders Xavi and Iniesta.  They both got away with it because it’s the Final. Why not Puyol?

As far as the match goes, Webb put the clubs level on cause for injustice by ignoring Puyol’s infraction. He knew, as did the 700 million people watching (aside from maybe those wearing orange), that sending off a Spanish player before a single Dutch ejection would have been ethically criminal. 

The Dutch were lucky not to be playing with nine players at the time of Puyol’s interference with Robben.  Had Webb followed the letter of the law, a numeric advantage for Spain would have already put the match out of reach at time of the incident.


Nobody is walking away from football

Away from the Final now and thinking about the tournament as a whole, one of the most annoying things to me during this World Cup was the ‘we know better’ attitude from North American pundits. Maybe it was happening elsewhere too, but I was more acutely aware of it in my own backyard.

Most of us in Canada and the United States that watched every match, enjoyed the football and commented on the tactics and festivities. But a few decided it was their mission to advocate radical reforms in football to make the beautiful game more perfect.

False prophets. The game is thriving everywhere and there is no need to convert the non-believers. They'll never come.

The incessant calls for video replay, with near-zero elaboration on its viability or employment across the board just because North American sports use it, is more arrogant than anything FIFA has conjured up lately. 

Then came the even more atrocious nag on Luis Suarez as a ‘cheat’ because he did what every player in the world would do if his country was faced with elimination from the World Cup. This wasn't just a North American disease, but it was rampant enough both in print and on television here to merit a mention.

Do the ‘cheat’ journalists truly believe that with his goal-preventing handball, Suarez planned for the brilliant Asamoah Gyan to miss a match-winning penalty, or for two of his teammates to take dreadful spot kicks in the shootout bringing Africa to tears?

Suarez isn't that good.

The Uruguayan was ejected for his action and Ghana had a chance to win the match fair and square. He missed. There wasn’t any cheating.

Rules that govern the world’s game do not need to change drastically because the self-righteous sensibilities of a few journalists were offended on a July night in Johannesburg.

The most ridiculous are those who make the unfounded and unsubstantiated accusation that people will walk away from this game because of such actions as that of Suarez. 

The game doesn't have a 'growth' problem. It's popular, even in the United States. What it does have a problem with are meddlers who would rather see it in their own image than accept its vibrancy.

Luis Suarez may be a hero in Uruguay, but some journalists insist on attaching the 'cheat' label on him. (Getty)

If North American sports aren’t obliterated by its athletes taking steroids, facing rape or murder charges off the playing field and beating up taxi drivers in Buffalo, the world isn’t going to walk away from football because there were a small handful of controversies.

Pundits should also know that it makes for boring television when three or four men sit at a desk agreeing with each other about the need for video replay without entertaining any of the opposing views with guests or analysts that disagree. Perhaps they should get John Doyle on to defend the purists.

Another solution could be if the reformists and doom merchants could start walking away from the game themselves and see if anyone follows.

I bet they won't try that one.


Overall refereeing was good

The previous entry takes me into this point.

All of the vitriol that was generated over the disallowed Maurice Edu goal in USA-Slovenia and Frank Lampard’s no-goal call against Germany was more than a bit much.

While these two things could have impacted the tournament, it largely didn’t. Neither did the call Mexico suffered against Argentina when Carlos Tevez was offside before heading in the Lionel Messi floater. 

Yet we had to hear about poor officiating as though it happened on a regular basis. Well, it didn’t.

According to a study of the officiating leading up to the Final, referees’ calls in matches were 96% correct.  The same pundits that like to harangue endlessly about accuracy, must enjoy that stat. But, it likely won’t be good enough for them.