ONE-NIL TO FOOTBALL

The match was a mess, but Spanish quality eventually told as Andres Iniesta bashed the ball gleefully into the bottom-left corner.

Holland weren’t kidding when they said they were prepared to win ugly. They chopped, tripped, niggled and argued their way through the first half, preying on referee Howard Webb’s reluctance to reduce either side to 10 men.

The appointment of an English ref was presumably supposed to help the game flow. The Netherlands took it as cue to hack their opponents (and the game) to death.

Nigel De Jong felled Xabi Alonso with a stamp to the chest that was every bit as bad as Zinedine Zidane’s butt on Marco Materazzi four years ago.

So forcefully did De Jong strike his victim that you half expected his foot to plunge right through Alonso’s ribcage and emerge from the Spaniard’s back.

It said it all that within minutes ‘Shaolin Soccer’ was a trending topic on Twitter.

Mark van Bommel, not for the first time this month, should have been sent off on about six occasions.

You might say it was a tough game for Webb to officiate, but had he put his foot down and sent off De Jong, both teams would have cut out the nonsense.

As it was, they saw Webb was determined to keep 22 players on the pitch and exploited the Rotherham official’s weakness.

Holland were finally reduced to 10 in extra time after Johnny Heitinga pulled back Andres Iniesta.

In total Webb brandished one red card and 14 yellows (including one to Iniesta for his tribute to a dead former colleague, Dani Jarque – a gesture adjudged as heinous as De Jong’s assault).

Refereeing bungling then turned to equally hapless play in front of goal from both teams.

Arjen Robben missed a golden chance in normal time before Spain squandered a hatful of opportunities in extra time – until finally Iniesta ensured justice was done.

Had the Dutch won, it would have been very difficult for me to talk about the game without sounding like David Coleman describing the Battle of Santiago in 1962.

“Good evening. The game we witnessed tonight was the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football, possibly in the history of the game.”

I’m as cynical as anyone when it comes to winning by any means, but the point is that is shouldn’t have worked for the Dutch. This wasn’t Mourinho-style pressure-and-contain stuff. It was just violence.

I tried to pay the Dutch a compliment after the semi-final by comparing them to West Germany. But those German teams always played with much more quality, and never resorted to hacking wildly. Not as a Plan A, anyway.

They should have been reduced by at least two players in the first half alone, and you don’t win cup finals with nine men. Unless you’re Rangers. OK, let me rephrase that, you don’t win proper finals.

It was like the script of a bad Hollywood movie in which a group of loveable losers sacrifice their scruples in ruthless pursuit of success (Cool Runnings basically).

Hopefully they will one day reach the point two-thirds of the way through the film when they realise winning doesn’t feel good unless you stay true to yourself, and revert to type.

Before kick-off, serial Catalan pitch invader Jimmy Jump ran onto the pitch and was brought down by security before he could nick the trophy (video evidence actually suggests he was only trying to put a hat on it – really).

Jump was carted off by police, but given the spectacle we had to witness, it would have been better to bring him back and present him with the World Cup instead of giving it to the Dutch.

We really do live in a mixed-up world when Holland are international football pariahs. But one thing remains unchanged – it is 24 years since we had a decent World Cup final.

But let’s not worry about how the result came about, let’s just be happy it was the right one.

Vicente Del Bosque’s side did not finish with the kind of flourish that might have seen them anointed among the greatest champions ever, but they finished.

Uruguay, Italy, West Germany, Brazil, England, Argentina, France… Spain.

SOURCE: Armchair Pundit, Yahoo! Eurosport