world cup thread

[Lissa]

The Spanish strategy is normally to play a careful, technical game, and beat their opponents through superior skill. The Dutch strategy was to disrupt the Spanish strategy as well as possible to stop them from scoring. Add the two together, and you have a game that was almost a parody of football - no goals, no thrills, lots of dubious moves, nobody committing to anything.

So, it wasn't just a bad game. It was a strategic choice to have a bad game. Too much on the line for both teams, I think.

-Jester

Yes sad....we teached them how to play that game, failed ourselves in 1974 and 1978 and now again get beaten, this time by our pupils......Cruijff our national football icon has cost us again a titel.

I found that the Spanish midfield was easily made toothless by the dutch. Also David Villa wasn't able to do anythinhg this game.
For the rest, the dutch played like the played the whole tournament.....not sharp enough.....our star players Robbern, van Persie, Sneijder, van der Vaart just didn't find eachother.....so in that sense we didn't loose undeserved.
Point is, that Spain was also nothing special....so I am sad they won.
About the roughness of the match. The Dutch were stupid to make too many fauls on midfield.....so useless ones, while the Spanish only tackled players going for the goal.....so it might seems the dutch played dirty.....at least the ref saw it.....what the Spanish did remained unseen.

Both teams could have gotten a few red cards as well.....but I guess not giving them is in the spirit of the game. (I think de Jongs attack on the chest was not as bad as it looked.....if he had only put a little force on his foot the Spanish guy would not be able to play anymnore.....so there a yellow card was a good decission.

The goal was a sad ending of this game, because the referee didn't see the previous attack should have ended in a corner kick for Holland. Instead he gave it to the spanish and they scored directly (with some offiside and kicking from Iniesta involved I heard (didn't see the replays anymore).

I feel now I can't enjoy watching a football game anymore....hopefully this chhanges again. With the extra negative is that we, the dutch, didn't win anything but were at least known for the best looking football......now we are also known as a dirty team.....(which I still find not correct but can of course clearly understand why).

Denmark deserved to lose that match. They played extremely dirty. And that kick to the chest by de Jongs was completely uncalled for and should have been red carded no matter what, he wasn't trying to get to the ball, he was trying to take the Spaniard out of the game. That is a red card offense no matter how much hurt he put on the Spaniard.

Spain deserved that win way more than Denmark did.