1. Life is a stage – If football is theatre, then this was pure pantomime, complete with heroes, villains and utter nonsense from start to finish. The good, the bad and the ugly…and the ugly, the ugly, and some more ugly thrown in for good measure just in case anyone hadn’t already had their fill of ugliness by having to look at Carlos Puyol for an extra 30 minutes. A bunch of diving, screeching, card waving nancies ran amok….and they were the righteous deserving victors. What the Dutch did on Sunday night can barely be described as football, unless you prefix it with the word “American”.
2. The calm before the storm – The biggest game in sport began like every other at this tournament has: With a lot of people in tracksuits being led out to inappropriately mundane synthesised video game music. Holland clearly won the battle of the pre-match tracksuits (which apparently every team is now required to wear upon entrance), comfortably outclassing the Spaniards in a nice little orange number with white trimming and funky black collar. Their dominance of the foreplay rituals continued as they easily out sung their opponents during the national anthems, mostly due to the fact that none of the largely Catalan Spanish even attempted to sing theirs. They also had the cooler monarch, draped in a scarf and looking like a cut price Donald Trump at an orange order parade. Nelson Mandela had earlier appeared, thankfully negating the need for his attending understudy Morgan Freeman to have to step in to display his woeful grasp of accents. The game was afoot; this is what it’s all about. What could possibly go wrong?….And then we kicked off.
3. War…Huh..What is it good for? – For a brief period it looked like we’d get what we’d all been wishing for, a great game and an early goal. Spain looked up for it, Sergio Ramos (played here by Val Kilmer) nearly put the favourites ahead with a diving header, Villa hit the side netting with a volley and Ramos got in again only to skew a cross shoty type thing across the box – all within the first 10 minutes. And then it all went wrong. Howard Webb sprung into action with 2 yellows in a matter of minutes. Both were clear bookings, and both enticed clearly ridiculous play-acting. Things were starting to look ominous. After some excellent flagging from Mike Mullarkey (controlling his touchline with true lionhearted English grit, the flag like an extension of his muscular, masculine, English arms!) Mark Van Bommel clattered Iniesta like an utter cu…cumber, before being booked for unfathomably only the 2nd time this tournament. It all got a bit dull for 10 minutes or so before Webb stepped up valiantly to book Nigel De Jong for what can only be described as grievous bodily harm on Xabi Alonso. Channelling Eric Cantona and Jet Li, De Jong should certainly have been sent off for the most vicious act in a World Cup final since…erm…Zidane in the last World Cup final, but presumably hoping to avoid being the person who ended the spectacle, Webb showed leniency. He needn’t have worried about that particular tag as it happened, as at least 9 other people were ready and willing to step in and take it with glee. Suddenly, the realisation dawned that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant evening.
4. Lock Stock and Two Smoking Bommels – After another terrible tackle from Van Bommel I started to run out of expletives to describe what I was seeing, so instead decided to make up new, innocuous ones out of everyday mundane household fixtures. Wesley Sneijder proved himself to be a right cushion by kicking Iniesta then staying down to avoid a booking and as the half time whistle blew I was left to reflect on what a right bunch of napkins this Dutch side were transpiring to be.
5. WWJD – In the second half and Howard Webb continued his fine form by booking his 6th, 7th and 8th players of the day before the 6th, 7th and 8th passes of the half had been completed. Nothing much happened of note for a while, Xavi hit a free kick over, another bald Dutch player was booked for something, Another Spaniard waved an invisible card and football started to wheeze, cough and splutter desperately out of the picture. It’s at times like this some people like to wonder, “what would Jesus do?” and they were thankfully given an answer for once, as he came on – Navas that is – to provide the game with something it desperately needed – a bit of pace and intent (of the non malicious kind)
6. Chance’d be a fine thing – Then, just as Clarence Seedorf was telling us that what the teams really needed to do to liven things up was “try and score a goal” (thanks Clarence!) Arjen Robben was put clear through by a delicious Sneijder ball only to be denied by the out stretched leg of Casillas. From then on some positive things actually started to happen. Villa missed from a yard out, had a shot deflected wide after some nice tic-tac-toe (or whatever it’s called) Ramos skied a header unmarked from a corner, Iniesta wriggled underneath Heitinga like a child through a cat flap before Sneidjer of all people slid in brilliantly to deny him and Robben went through again, only to be pulled back by Puyol, not go down, miss his chance, and then go down too late to no avail. This was more like it (just about) but would the breakthrough ever, EVER come! Not in normal time, and we were plunged, desperately into an extra 30.
7. It’s Alive! – And Extra-Time, amazingly – and contrary to everything that went before it – was almost brilliant. If instead of 90 minutes of utter nonsense, we’d just have had this half hour of attacking intent it may well have been a classic. It didn’t start promisingly, with at least 3 Spanish players falling over needlessly in the box at the same time to try and win a penalty, but from then on it burst into life. Fabregas went though from a glorious Iniesta pass only to be denied. The compliment was immediately returned but the little No. 6 dallied on the ball in a 3 on 1 situation and Van Bronckhorst cleared. Holland missed a header from a corner after Fabregas had blocked his own keeper from reaching it. Iniesta nutmeged Robben in his own half, Jesus had a shot deflected wide, Fabregas saw another effort flash passed the post and Nigel De Jong was removed from the action – only a good hour later than he should’ve been – to be replaced with Van Der Vaart. Both teams seemed to want avoid penalties, and the ignominy of the worst final since ’94.
8. Webb of intrigue – Another Dutch player was booked, though by now I was long past caring and just wanted it to end. Though Howard Webb has come in for criticism I fail to see what more he could possibly have done. Yes he made a few errors but he had about 4 billion calls to make and made most with common sense. Only one sentient being on the planet could’ve called every singe decision in this cacophony of decisions right, and he’s safely tucked up in a tank in Germany. Arjen Robben was lucky to escape a second yellow for kicking the ball away but by this point Holland should’ve been down to about 6 players, so it hardly mattered how many more got away with it. Eventually Heitinger was shown his marching orders for pulling back Iniesta, and although there was more than a hint of theatre about the fall, it was almost immaterial as by now I was firmly rooting for Spain and had cast everyone in Orange as somewhere between Pol Pot and Simon Cowell in my mind. The Dutch press have bitterly labelled Webb a chump for failing to award them a corner, whilst strangely ignoring his noble attempts to keep most of their players on the pitch. One even described them as lions, which if not ironic, must surely be being used in the literal sense of vicious, dangerous, feral animals.
9. Cometh the Hour…- Fernando Torres came on to display all the touch, guile, elegance and poise of Raoul Moat – though unfortunately for the latter, far more anonymity – and then it happened. Elia was cock blocked in the Spanish half, Webb waved play on. Navas steamed forward, Iniesta back heeled the lose ball into Xavi and charged forward into space. Torres did the only useful thing he’s done in the whole entire tournament by spotting the run – and yet still failed to execute – Fabregas collected the clearance and swept it into the little balding playmaker still unmarked in the area, and the rest – as they say – is history. As the hero wheeled away to display a poignant message to a departed friend (the one and only true act of class in the whole god forsaken 120 minutes) the Dutch stormed to the officials in unabated fury. But it was futile. The heroes won out. The villains lost. The lowest scoring Champions in history, the most feather light, card waving bunch of cupboards to ever be praised as worthy, but worthy they are, and they did football a great service on Sunday night. For all their theatrics, and even under whelming football at times, those of us who cherish the beautiful game as just that should be thankful. Viva Espana…You silly bunch of coffee tables.
10. Peace, Love and Unity – Finally, it should be noted that while much has rightly been made of the coming together of Africa, it should also be celebrated that – for the meantime at least – the unity that football so often creates, has leant itself in victory to a fractious, divided and economically suffering country once again, just as it did when an ethnically diverse French team united France in 98. As the Catalan captain of Barcelona shook hands with the Queen of Spain following their semi final victory over Germany, and as a team containing Catalan, Castilian and Basque players met with the King in Madrid, a unique sense of unity and pride has swept a country so often described as a nation of nations. It probably won’t last, as it didn’t completely in France, and may not yet even in Africa, but for one brief, priceless moment, football has scored another victory. And that should celebrated just as heartily as the goal – scored by the Castilian player, of a Catalan club – that won the ultimate prize in football on Sunday night in Soccer City.