Match day … Manchester United

Netherlands vs Spain Review | FIFA World Cup 2010 Final – Tactics or Tackles ?

Yeah, Viva la Easpana! . Spain are the World Champions after beating Netherlands 1-0 in the final of FIFA world Cup 2010. They deserve it and they played the beautiful game in the dirty final.

The starting lineups are as expected in the preview. Which means, there is no place for Torres and Pedro takes his place. For Netherlands, they welcomed back van der Wiel and Nigel de Jong from suspension.

We must start the game review with this incident because thats the inspiration for Netherlands players in the first half. I gave the name dirty in the first paragraph because of the way Netherlands played.  See below, the security guy punching the intruder who tried to put his hands on the trophy before the teams gear up for the national anthems.

Once the game kicks off, the first 4mins are horrible. there are 3 fouls by Holland and are lucky to have Howard Webb as referee. We can understand this tactic for Holland as they looked to simulate the tactics of Chile to press and disturb the spains passing game. Also the Netherlands had maintained a high defense line in the first 30mins.  At the same time when Spain is not in position., they too pressed hard, inturn that didn’t allowed Netherlands to do any proper attack in the first half.

As you can see in above pic, Dutch maintained higher defensive line and the midfielders are not as tight as it expected or as they played in previous games. Because, they need to follow the Spain midfielders [Alonso and Busquets] when they have the ball. This two factors allowed spain to play some long balls to Villa who stayed up front. Almost few time he was through with those passes.

For Netherlands, the tactic is to disturb the spains passing game. So everyone is busy with that and Robben was the best player in that half as he tried to cut in and shoot but he always ran into the traffic. When spain found the Robben’s runs, one of them started covering the space between Capdevila and Iniesta [playing central]. Nigel de Jong should have gotten a red card from referee Howard Webb for his karate kick of Xabi Alonso, and Mark van Bommel could have drawn red as well for a challenge on Iniesta.

Second half:

The start of the second half is better than the first half but it looked overall the same. Netherlands are not able to press as high as they did in the first half. It is understandable that, after 5 booking, they can not simply press and get the red cards. But the turning point of this dirty game is Substitutions.

Width for Spain

first change is from Spain, they replaced Perdo who is playing inside and central with Navas. This gave spain what they have been missing. The width and opportunity to stretch the game. This gave more space for the Spain midfielders to play. Once this substitution was made, Iniesta started playing brilliantly as he has more space up front now. And he got 2 opportunities to seal the deal but Dutch keeper denied him.

Robben Chances

At 71’ min, Dutch replaced Kuyt with Elia…an attacking minded substitution and now they have a winger on the left. Now, Van Persie started to play towards left means the central defenders of the Spain need to move a bit towards left and track him. This allowed Robben to move freely from left to inside. We can see that effect of it, He missed a glarious change and was denied by Casillas twice. I still didn’t understand why didn’t Robben tried to Chip the ball first time and why didn’t he dive, the second time.

Introduction of Fabregas

now at 87’ min, Alonso was replaced by Fabregas for Spain. This is not a straight swap. Xavi moved to more deeper role infront of Busquets and Fabregas played in Xavi’s position.  Fabregas started running straight at goal from the midfield and his passing was also very good. He has a good chance in the first extra time to score in one-on-one situation but his shot doesn’t have power. Now spain has its midfielders in their best position and the positions where they play for their clubs. Result is Spain are back to their best passing game. And Iniesta was brilliant in the extra time.

Then Netherlands made an attacking minded substution by replacing De Jong with Van der Vaart but just after 10mins of that, they found themselves with 10men. A Deserving red card shown by referee considering the Dutch’s physical game. Heitinga’s second yellow came when he brought down Iniesta. Once he left the field, Iniesta has more space to exploit.

Golden Goal:

Finally, the goals came after the red card and Dutch were reduced to 10members. As indicated above, Iniesta was found in space. The passing started from Navas’s run, who gave the ball to Fabregas who is in advanced position and found Iniesta in space. This time there is not mistake from Iniesta….he found the net, and thats all.

A disappointing final…it had 47fouls, 13 yellow [8NED+5ESP] and 1 Red card. Spain had kept the position as expected but they failed to create chances and Netherlands preferred to disturb the Spain passing flow by adopting the physical game but they ended up with many yellow cards and 1 man down. Spain needed Netherlands to go down to 10 men to score the goal and win the Final.

Again the substutions made all the deference in the game, in terms of quality. The Euro champs are crowned as World Champions in an all European Final surely this is the Golden generation of Spain’s Football and will be termed as the greatest team.