FIFA World Cup 2010: A Review

Afternoon all. After one month and 64 games, World Cup 2010 has drawn to a close. And may I be the first to say, thank God!

I cannot remember being more let down by a football tournament than I have been this time around. Never has so much hype led to so little action. All we heard before the start of June was that this would be "a celebration of football", "an African party the world will never forget." Yet, after all that, this World Cup will only be remembered for one thing.

Fear.

That's right. Fear. This World Cup was filled with fear of an amazing array of differing factors. Fear of altitude affecting players. Fear of the ball moving around in 20,000 different directions. Fear of stadiums not selling out completely. Fear of having to watch ITV's coverage for over three hours if a game went to extra-time. But most of all, fear of losing.

Never have I seen so many teams be so negative in their approach toward a game of football. It was as if they took one look at their respective fixtures and decided that it wasn't worth their while attacking as they'd only get beaten, so instead they devised various ways of stopping their opponents from scoring.

We saw New Zealand play five at the back and ended up drawing all their games, amazingly becoming the only side to remain unbeaten throughout the tournament. We saw Algeria fail to score a single goal in three games. But it wasn't just the lesser nations who were afraid.

If I was asked to pick the two countries who, in my opinion, were best known for their attacking philosophy towards football, then it would be an easy answer. Brazil and Holland. And yet in 2010, even they have decided that it's a much better to idea to stop other teams from playing, rather than try to attack.

10 years ago, these teams' most influential players would have been either Dennis Bergkamp or Ronaldinho or Rivaldo. Today, it's Mark van Bommel and Gilberto Silva, who are pivotal to the way they want to play. It's so depressing.

It's no wonder then, that in a tournament that values possession and defensive midfielders over flair and skill, that the team with an abundance in players both good on the ball and tactically savvy enough to know when to give away the cheap foul, would end up winning the trophy.

Spain is a team that knows what they're good at, and they do it better than anyone else in the world—that being getting the ball from their opponents and waiting for them to make a mistake before pouncing.

Spain played four knockout games in this World Cup. The scores of those matches read as follows: 1-0, 1-0, 1-0, and 1-0. George Graham would have loved to manage this team.

Apart from their first game of the tournament, when they were clearly expecting the Swiss to just roll over and die, they've approached their matches with the same mentality to playing, that being let the opponents run around the pitch chasing after the ball for 65 minutes, then start to run at them once they're tired. And it worked every time.

The only team to give them any sort of headache was Chile. And it can't be a coincidence that Chile was the only team that attacked them at every opportunity, can it?

But there's always one game that sums up every World Cup. The Final. In 2002, it was Brazilian flair against German discipline. In 2006, it was Italian discipline against French insanity (see Zidane, Domenech etc).

This time around, it was Spanish gamesmanship versus Holland's gamesmanship. Both teams decided that they were both going to be as petty and as devious as possible. Every trick out of the book was pulled out in order to stop the other team from putting three or four passes together.

For the first time ever, I felt sorry for a referee because in that one game, we saw everything that is wrong in today's football. Diving, rolling around injured for no reason, the waiving of imaginary cards after miraculous recovery from serious injury three seconds previously, players protesting every decision the officials made; this game had tons of all of that.

When Ramos cleared the ball out for a throw and immediately gave out to the linesman for giving Holland that throw, even though there was no one within 15 yards of him, it was obvious that Howard Webb would struggle to keep order. When a ref is criticised for not keeping players under control, despite showing 14 yellow cards and one red, then something is badly, badly wrong.

When players know they can cheat, they will cheat. And as soon as something is done that stops players getting away with making eight to 10 fouls in a game without repercussion, then what we saw last night will become a high water mark in the age of negative tactics in football. But if something isn't done, then all this final will become is the norm.

Finally, congratulations to Adam Hill for winning my Sky Fantasy League. I'm sure I speak for everyone who took part in it, when I say, "Get lost, you horrible cheating ****!" Or maybe that's just me.

'Til tomorrow readers.