Spain, the perennial underperformer, won the World Cup of 2010, and this blogger cannot be any happier. I started this blog in the hope that Spain would make it far into the tournament for the first time in the history of the World Cup. Winning the tournament was more of a dream than a hope. This competition is extremely difficult to win. There are too many variables at play, too many good teams in the tournament to call any of them a sure winner from the start.
There were strong reasons for believing that the odds were in Spain's favor this time, though. Spain was the European Champion at the time, and a very deserving, very dominant one. Most importantly, Spain had developed in the last few years a very effective and clearly-defined style, a pretty unique way of playing football particularly fit for its best players. Under this style, Spain had only lost 1 game in the last four years before the World Cup started.
In this blog I have done my best to explain this Spanish style of playing football, and to point out the current Spanish coach's mixed feelings about it. Keeping in mind these mixed feelings of the Spanish coach, Vicente Del Bosque, let's review the final game of the Word Cup in South Africa 2010.
The Netherlands played the strategy that I had anticipated in the Spanish version of this blog--it attempted to shortcut the flow of the Spanish passing game by constantly fouling the Spaniards, and then to counterattack using Robben's speed runs. The Dutch constant fouling did not come up as a surprise. Before the final game, Holland had already received 15 yellow cards through the World Cup--Spain had received 3. Van Marwjik, the Dutch coach, was very open about his will to winning this tournament whatever it took. What no one could have anticipated was the degree of violence that the Dutch would deploy, and the degree of tolerance that the English referee, Howard Webb, would exercise. I must add, nevertheless, that the officiating was almost impecable in all other respects.
Let me say a word about English tradition of excellent officiating. It is probably the strongest virtue of English officiating that the English refs manage rough actions in a very civilized way, calming down the players through dialogue, verbal warnings, and the occasional yellow card, without the need to kick players out of the game. Unfortunately, this officiating technique only works when rough actions are the colateral result of honest fair play, the non-intentional consequence of a straightforward yet exessively agressive fight for the ball. In this case, the Dutch violence was intentional and systematic. This was a strategy, as several Dutch players shamelessly acknowledged after the game. No referee's dialoguing and warning was going to calm it down, and yellow cards were not going to do the trick either unless they would be followed by a second yellow at some point down the road. The Dutch central striker, Robbie van Persie, acknowledged a few weeks after the game that they had studied Howard Webb, who officiates in the same league where van Persie plays, the English League. They had an educated guess that Webb would be very reluctant to "spoil" his performance in the most important game of his career by showing an early red card. So they could be confident in their agressively tackling the Spainards. It is nevertheless really hard to understand why De Jong was not shown a red card for this extreme brutality in the 27th minute of the game--the referee may not have had a clear vision of it, but his assistants must have had it:
It was a real shame. The poor administration of red cards effectively prevented the Spanish game to flow, and made for a very tense, yet not very high quality game, as goal opportunities could only come up sparsely. Spain, and fair play, were really close to get beat. It is no surprise that the international press would trash the Dutch violence unanimously the day after.
And then again, just look at where Van Bommel is directing his cleats to and where the ball is:
This was the Dutch strategy--conservative, violent, sad. It was also completely out out character. A true betrayal to the tradition of Dutch stylish and fair play football. It is not just my opinion and the unanimous opinion of the international press. Van Marwjik's Holland was also heavily critized after the game by the best Dutch player in history, Johan Cruyff, and also by Ruud Gullit, another Dutch legend. They were saddened by the ultra-conservative Dutch strategy. Ball possession was 37,1% for Holland, 62,9% for Spain. Holland had a similar percentage as Mourinho's Inter Milan when it beat Barcelona in the semifinals of the Champions League this year. And yet, Inter Milan played an ultra-defensive yet fair play game. Holland did not. Big difference, which both Dutch former players also embarrasingly pointed out.
As for the Spaniards, they found a very hard time to cut through the Dutch defensive lines. Besides the Dutch defensive roughness and discipline, the Spanish coach is also to be blamed for this. He played a very conservative game, fearful of the Duth counterattacks, and his conservatism made it much harder for the Spaniards to score sooner.
The most important factors that contributed to the victory of Spain were defensive factors--Casillas saves against Robben, Puyol's experience to interfere with Robben without pulling him down to the ground, thus avoiding being sent to take a shower, Capdevilla's execellent and quiet job against Robben through the entire game, Pique's brilliant consistency, the excellent off-side line (congrats to the entire defensive line, and congrats to Del Bosque too), Busquets- the-octopus constant steals (this octopus truly made a difference), Xabi Alonso's helping job, and the circus-quality football of Xavi Hernandez and Iniesta to avoid loosing the ball under the tough Dutch pressure. It was remarkable the lack of determinant attacking factors going for Spain except for a huge one-Fabregas substituting Alonso at the 85min.
The game went through 4 very distinct phases.
PHASE 1: Up to the 11th minute. Spain had 3 very clear chances to score, one every three minutes, and overwhelmingly dominated the ball possession.
PHASE 2: Between minutes 11h and 59th. Spanish offensive game was effectively neutralized by Holland. No scoring opportunities for either team. Spain kept in full control of the ball possession, but was unable to cross the Dutch defensive lines in the midfield.
PHASE 3: Between minutes 59th and 85th, that is, between the entry of Navas and the entry of Fábregas. Spain lost the full control over the ball possession, and the game opened up. Holland stole more balls, and created the clearest scoring opportunities in the game. Spain had also a very clear chance to score during this phase.
PHASE 4: between the 85th minute and the end of the game. Ás soon as Fábregas replaced Alonso in the 85th minute, the game changed dramatically. Spain got back the overwhelming control over the ball possession, and for the first time in the game, it cut through the Dutch defensive midfield lines and got scoring opportunities consistently. Through this phase, Spain enjoyed 5 clear scoring chances before actually scoring. Holland enjoyed only one, in a corner kick.
ANALYSIS
The Dutch strategy was not hard to anticipate. Del Bosque and his technical team were well aware of it long time in advance. Was Del Bosque's strategy the best fit to overcome the Dutch plan? I do not think so.
Most peoploe think that winner coach's strategy should never be argued against. This is the approach taken by the Spanish press, and also by most of the International press. I think, on the contrary, that Spain beat Holland inspite of the Spanish coach, who played with fire most of the game and made some bad decissions that put the Spanish team highly at risk of losing it. Only five minutes to the end of the game, Del Bosque did the right thing. By bringing in Fábregas for Alonso, he completely changed the game, at last.
He had made the very same substitution against Paraguay with identical results. The game also changed dramatically in favor of Spain. It leaves us wondering what would have happened had Spain played with this line-up from the start in most games, including the big final.
I must grant that Spain could have scored in the first eleven minutes of the game, and then we would be talking now about a high-score, a very open game, etc. Nevertheless, the fact that Spain only shot four times against the Dutch goalie in the first half still feels much too conservative, and a big waste of attacking potential on the Spanish side.
The scarcity of scoring opportunities for Spain must be seen, therefore, as the result of Del Bosque´s extra-cautious strategy. Spain would attack only with 3 players agasint 7, sometimes 9 Dutch players in the midfield and defense. All the other Spaniards would move forward only behind the ball, never in front of it. Only Ramos and Xavi Hernández would ocasionally move forward to help out. Using such a conservative approach, scoring became extremely hard for the Spaniards, even more so when the Dutch strategy was even more conservative, having very populated and rough midfield and defensinve lines.
After 50 long minutes of Spain not getting even close to score (much less Holland), Del Bosque made his second mistake of the night-the first one being his conservatism-, i.e., replacing Pedro for Navas. Del Bosque explained after the game that he wanted young Navas to attack old Van Bronkhorst, who was 35 years old. Gee, this sounds like a small team coach from some teenage league. The Dutch coach ordered a striker, Kuyt, to help out Van Bronkhorst and that was the end of the story for Navas. It was a no brainer.
As Spain lost a guy in the midfield, hovever, ball posession became harder and harder for the Spaniards. Holland started to steal some balls for the first time in the game, and then the most clear scoring opportunities for Robben showed up. He missed both of them, both to miracolous saves by Casillas. By bringing Navas into the game, Del Bosque had been close to screwing the whole thing up.
Five minutes to the end, at the 85th minute, Del Bosque made what must have felt to him like a really bold move. He replaced Alonso for Fábregas, a static midfielder who likes to play closer to the defensive line for a dynamic midfielder who likes to go back and forth and to frequently step into the opponent's box. Xavi Hernández and Iniesta finally found a partner much closer to them, and a really dynamic one, who would show up whenever they needed help. Spain claimed back the overwhelming ball posession, and scoring opportunities started to pour over the Dutch goalie. Defensively, Spain had also greatly improved. More ball posession for Spain meant less scoring opportunities for Holland. In fact, Holland only enjoyed one more scoring opportunity-a header in a corner-kick that went really far off the goal. That was it for Holland from the 85th minute until the end of the game in the 120th minute. Spain could have scored five times in the same period of time, and all these opportunities arrived after skilfull passing combinations with Fábregas as one of the main actors.
After the game Del Bosque explained how hard it was for him to bring Fábregas in. He confessed that he feared the loss of height in the midfield! Seriously, this is what he said in the post-game press conference. Mind you that Alonso and Fábregas are just 3 centimeters apart. But come on, even if they were 20 centimeters apart! That should be the last consideration when ball posession and attacking power is at stake! Does Del Bosque prefer to defend by having the ball of by having taller players? To me it is rather depressing to confirm that he is still torn between these options. His mixed feelings about the system that he inherited from Luis Aragonés remained very alive until the very last game of the World Cup.
When Spain performs in the right way, by constantly rotating positions, as it happened when Fábregas entered the game, any player can end up scoring. The name of the scorers should be just an anecdote. In such circumstances the real scorer is the team, not an individual person. However, there was a lot of poetic justice in the fact that the scorer of the winning goal was Iniesta, who happened to be the most fouled player in the game, and a midfielder, and also the shortest player on the field.
End of the analysis. The last few lines of this last post should be praising and celebrating lines. All lovers of collective, combinative, skilfull and attacking football must be very grateful to the entire Spanish team, Del Bosque included. Spain has an exceptional group of professionals, with an outstanding degree of commitment, mental strength and football quality. This group won the second major international championship in a row, the biggest one in the history of Spanish football, and it was not by accident. Spain is a very deserving World Champion. Congratulations, and thank you very much indeed.
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