Just Iniesta The Nick Of Time

Lineker said it. He really said it. You were waiting and then when it came it was like a bit of regurgitated ice-cream at the back of the throat. It was a 'victory for football'.

Well, I'll go so far as to say it was a victory for Spain and they played better football than Holland. That's about it.
It was a bloody abysmal final, right up there with 1994. And there are three reasons for this.

Reason 1. The Dutch. Every time I've switched on a radio this last week I've heard some git banging on about Total Football. It's allowed nostalgics to get misty-eyed and talk about players of the past in plurals - your Cruyffs, your Reps, your Neeskenseses (?).

Clearly that was then. Van Marwijck has set about that legacy like a Tory chancellor going at a budget deficit. And he left us with Van Bommel and De Jong, which is presumably Dutch for shock and awe.

I know you can't let a side like Spain just pass the ball about like a crack team of 17th century firefighters with a bucket, but neither can you seek to disrupt their flow by scything them down like so much Iberian barley or stamping on their hearts.

I noticed de Jong crossed himself like a Christian as he was subbed off. It was the first Christian thing he bloody well managed. Maybe he was worried about tracking back with Jesus (Navas). Meanwhile van Bommel stomped around like a cyberman with bad hair, bleating away at the ref every time he deigned to give a decision against the Oranjes.

Upfront they had a single threat. Robben bob-bob-bobbed along in the usual way, all high-stepping pace and left foot and tumbling like a stilton in a cheese-rolling contest. What is about the selfish, hawk-eyed, whingeing, uni-pegged slaphead that I don't like, I wonder?

I was delighted that it was Arjen who failed to take the best chance of the match.

Reason 2 was of course Howard Webb. I don't entirely blame the bloke. You can imagine the dictats winging their way from FIFA HQ. They'll be marking you Howie, so do your best to earn the Sepp ticks. And if you doubt the doggedness of FIFA in trying to get what it wants then just ask the Mandela family. Sepp, he's ninety fucking two and he spent twenty-seven years in jail. He'd probably like to watch it on the telly at his house, you unsympathetic twot.

[NB Note for England players: The jail in question was called Robben Island. I realise you probably thought it was a theme park based on the antics of a mazy left-winger from the Low Countries, but a little research might have told you summat about where you were playing the tournament, you ignorant nerks.]

No doubt there's a prerogative to keep all the players on the pitch (unless the opposition starting XI has been deleted by a Dutch holding midfielder). But clearly Webb should have fronted up and removed De Jong from proceedings. I've not seen Jackie Chan play football but I know now what it would look like.

The constant stream of bookings - I swear by the end of the game he was walking around like a tour guide with the yellow card permanently in the air - didn't inhibit the Dutch. It was almost like the responsibilty for kicking the opposition just got shifted on to someone else.

To be honest, there wasn't much else Webb could've done. Vamn Marwijck can moan all he likes about Puyol staying on the pitch (deliciously because Robben stayed on his fett. HA!)Frankly, Iniesta was taken out more times and by more people than your average school bike, and I was pleading for Howard to just stop the game, pick up the ball and roll it past Stekelenburg.

So it was 1-0. For all their mastery of a football - even one as goddamn floaty and crap as the Jubblibubbli - Spain never took enough of their chances to be truly celebrated.

There again, this is FIFA at its worst (reason number three). As an organisation it seems desperate to make things difficult for itself. The ball was as difficult to keep down as a teenage erection, but also the stadiums were left vacant when vast quantities of poor black people would've given their eye teeth to watch a game.

Furthermore, having employed technical genius to come up with a ball you wouldn't buy for a quid from the corner shop, they failed to engage similar technology to actually make the game better.

God knows England didn't deserve anything less than an utter drubbing from Germany but the ease with which the Lampard shot could've been confirmed as a goal just beggars belief. After all, Zidane got dismissed in last year's final cos of the intervention of some 'extra' officials who'd been watching the telly like the rest of us.

FIFA have to introduce technology now or the game will go down the pan. All this slo-mo HD stuff just reveals the true extent of skulduggery at play, and at the very least, as I've said so many times I want to punch myself in the face, you can used video footage to ban the serial divers for 5 games minimum.

So this wasn't a competition to savour. And the Dutch nearly brought it to the ugliest conclusion.

I've mustered a team of the tournament?

Eduardo (Portugal);
Maicon (Brazil), Lucio (Brazil), Puyol (Spain), Capdevila (Spain);
Xavi (Spain), Arevalo (Uruguay), Iniesta (Spain);
Mueller (Germany), Forlan (Uruguay), Villa (Spain).

Of course Sneijder, Ozil and Schweinsteiger should be in there too but I liked the Uruguayan clogger.

Above all, though I will remember this World Cup as a line in the sand. Not only do we hold on to the notion that Spain are the best team in the world cos they look nice when they play footy, it's cos they do things that English footballers - Rooney included this time around - are completely unable to do.

They're what the relentlessly alliterative Hansen would call touch and tecnhnique. I call it brilliance and bollocks. The Germans have power, pace and penetration. We have disdain, disgrace and disinterest.

In with the new. As soon as is humanly possible.

No Spain No Gain

Ooo, aren't they marvellous that Spain?

You just can't get the ball off them and they ping it around like some very elegant pinball machine. Every touch is a beautiful caress, every swivel and shimmy leaves the lumbering defender squinting in disbelief. Tis not footy. Tis poetry. Dribble, slurp, slaver...

Yes, yes, yes. Agreed, up to a point. But why can't the faffing beggars score more than one bloody goal! Eh?! It used to be a standing joke amongst football fans that your team could thrash the opposition 1-0. With Spain it's bloody well true.

It seems to me they're far too content being a kind of blissed-out Arsene Wenger wet dream and not too bothered about getting the job done. Germany should have been tonked. The team that put four past Argentina and England couldn't muster more than a sidefoot scuffer from the sub Toni Kroos (if that is his name. Strikes me that more and more international footballers sound like hairdressers - Artuto Vidal, Maxi Pereira...)

Now I'm not doubting the quality of the Spaniards and to be honest I can get a little bedazzled by the way they pass it about. Iniesta genuinely has a cloak of invisibility hidden under his shirt. Xabi Alonso's one-man campaign to make Rafa Benitez look the dimmest coach in club football is working perfectly. And Xavi Hernandez, who can make space for himself by raising an eyebrow, threads a pass with all the clairvoyance of a psychic octopus.

Why then, was I left hoping that Klose or someone might just blunder in a German winner?

I think it's this: Spain are the bunch of kids you come across on the playing fields and who challenge you to a kickabout and then spend the next hour turning you inside out more times than the half-price jumpers at TK Maxx. Not only that but they can't quite bring themselves to put the ball between the Adidas bags. If they can't score with a backheel or a scissor kick they just can't be arsed.

In other words, it's a bit bloody smug and although they're ostensibly goodies you can't help rooting for the ugly baddy to get a victory once. I mean I've been on the daleks' side during this season of Dr Who for the same reason. Rooting for Germany last night was like praying for Roadrunner to get squished by a boulder flung from an Acme Catapult.

Of course the acme of Spanish pissing about was Pedro's twist, turn and tumble when Torres just needed a little sidefoot across the box to record his latest glaring miss of the tournament. Just shoot, you little twat.


Dos patatas bravas per favor, Vicente. e muy than uno goal!

Still, you wondered why Del Bosque, still looking for all the world like the proud owner of a damn fine little tapas bar in downtown Salamanca that serves cracking Torres (the brandy), has taken so long to put the little Barca winger on at the start when Torres (the soon to be former Liverpool footballer) has been so abject.

Perhaps less noted but of more value has been Spain's really solid back two. I've always liked Puyol, niggly little Def Leppard reject though he is. Ramos is still a little wayward at the back but great going forward and a little more Red Hot Chili Peppers, I reckon. Capdevila is very dependable. And Fergie must still have a fit of Pique every time Gerard steps out from the back a la Lucio.

And, Capello, McClaren and every other numpty who's tried to make it work, please note that Fabregas doesn't start because Sr Del Bosque has a balanced midfield already - plus he has the nuts to leave out a good quality player rather than play him at left back just so he's on the bloody pitch!!!!

So it's Spain (ooh, aren't they just tippety-tappety tickety boo!) against Holland. Or the Netherlands. Why do they need two names for Christ's sake? Is there a difference? Anyway the Dutch have got there with a Dunga model, really. Two holding midfielders, and de Jong and Van Bommel seem to leave the pitch unsatisfied unless the studs on their vampire boots have tasted human blood, and an inventive front three in Sneijder, Van Persie and Robben. And Dirk Kuyt.


"Xavi... oh yes... I shall mark Xavi, boss... don't you vorry!"

And with the aid of the odd deflection, it's worked. Without being sparkling, or remotely Total Football, they've got the results. And in Robben and Sneijder they have the polar opposite of the shot-shy Spaniards. They may not be fit to light Cruyff's fags for him, but they've retained a bit of that shoot-on-sight tradition made glorious by the likes of Haan, Krol and Rep.

So it may well be that the Netherholls make the most of what little possession they have. But I doubt the ball will be more than a passing mayfly that glimmers and dies even as it appears. Spain will reign, I'm sure of it. Villa will confirm his golden-bootedness.

I just hope it's more than one-bloody-nil, that's all.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Well we can safely say the World Cup has revved into gear now we've got shot of Dommenech's enfants terrible, Lippi's pensioners and Capello's crocks of cack. Four good quarter-finals featuring plenty of grown men in tears - always a sign that things have been right tense.
NB How many England players were reaching for the man-size tissues after the Germany game? (Yeah, yeah, 'course it matters to you, boys).

Of course, the team of the tournament has been Germany. And naturally that means a bunch of lazy, half-baked analysis by the couch potatoes of MotD which has amounted to this:
Hansen: 'Great game-plan...'
Shearer: 'Organised, know their roles...'
Dixon: 'Yeah, what Alan said, erm... and what Alan said.'

They were a stone's throw away from saying 'They were only obeying orders and vorksprung durch technik.'


I am helping you to find your inner German, lads

Fact is the German team has shown more collective flair and dash than the rest of the teams put together. The fourth goal was a thing of beauty and had it been Messi to Tevez to Higuain we'd have been hearing all sorts of bollocks about how your Latin Americans can open tins of luncheon meat with one peg while constructing a matchstick model of the Casa Rosada with the other.

Look, this is the same German team that were only denied last time by a rare bit of devilry upfront from Del Piero and co and got to the final in Euro 2008. There's this idea that we can 'never discount the Germans' because they are deviously pre-programmed for success, when actually they just happen to have some seriously talented players who play well as a team.

The revelation has been Pigsticker (or Pigmounter) who we first saw being a snarling platinum blonde prima donna a few years back - a kind of German Pink minus the talent. This tournament, perhaps freed from the ponderous Barryesque plodder that is Michael Ballack, Schweinsteiger has been pulling the strings like a Prussian Xavi.

The new Schweinsteiger memorial statue

(By the way, since we pronounce that name 'Chavvy', isn't it inevitable that Chelsea will snap him up? Although extending that logic, Spurs and Arsenal will be fighting over Ponce's signature).

Can the Germans lift the trophy? Well Trochowski's a bit Mueller Lite so that might harm their chances but with Klose still defying the logic of club form in a way that might give Michael Owen renewed hope, and Ozil proving to be the best young player in South Africa, well, yes. They can.

Especially in the light of another of them off-key Spanish performances. Why the hell is Del Bosque picking Torres? I'm seriously wondering whether it's Dave Kitson after having found a bottle of Just For Men. His demeanour and movement remind me of Chrissy Waddle during his stint at Sunderland. Or Wayne Rooney in his last four games.

Still the Grattan catalogue coaching team of Germany will be crossing their fingers for Torres to turn up, even if he did terrify them two years ago.

I suppose the main thing is Spain have made it. The ref did right with both pens, although a retaken penalty is one of them sad jokes a ref likes to use just occasionally, like a foul throw, or a custodial sentence for possession of mairijuana. Yes, strictly speaking, it's wrong to encroach into the area at a spot-kick but really... who cares?

Iniesta's nous shone through in the end although clearly there's a rule in world football that if little ghostly Andres goes down, it's always a free kick. The lad's got the Becks knack of winning free-kicks for absolutely bugger-all and cos he's a player I love it's beginning to really rankle.

Of course the Spanish trump card is David 'Don't call me Aston' Villa. The lad's lethal.

Holland will win the other semi-final, no doubt. Beating Brazil was a right turn-up. Felipe Melo treating Robben like a discarded fag-end wasn't. That lads got more screws loose than a disorganised B and Q.

And of course the tie of the round was Uruguay-Ghana. I didn't give a fig about it but what a momentous game.

It will always be remembered for that handball - for which well played, Suarez lad, If that'd been Rooney I'd have been thanking him too (although Wazza displayed the reflexes of a neutered cat coming round from the op so I doubt he'd've got anywhere near it).

Me, I'll remember it not so much for Gyam's miss as the one he took in the penalty shoot-out.

That's a whole continent you've let down there, son.

It didn't stop the poor lad's eyes from gushing like a burst BP pipe after they lost, but crikey for sheer enormity of bollock it's the most admirable thing I've seen on a footy pitch for a while. And not far behind was Abreu's preposterously brave dink to win it for Uruguay.

Somehow the thrill of Wimbers failed to distract me much. Particularly the lasses which unsurprisingly featured a Williams and a megadecibelled Russian shrieker in the final. And a bunch of cowering tennis balls begging not to be hit again by the great clomping Amazons. Can't these harridans pipe down when they're playing? It's tennis not bleeding childbirth.

Brazil were my tip for the title so it's all up for grabs now. And if Germany can keep playing like they are, I hope they win it. Jesus. I never, never thought I'd ever write that sentence.