Two new chapters in World Cup history will be written at Soccer City today.
Spain’s meeting with the Netherlands guarantees that a new name will be on the trophy by the end of the evening, but the chroniclers of Africa’s first World Cup will also have to find space for the losers of a contest that must inevitably leave one of these two proud nations bereft.
PHOTO: AFP
For Spain, who will go into the match as favorites to earn the right to call themselves European and World champions, the agony of having to cancel the fiestas planned from Catalonia to Cadiz would be unbearable.
Yet it would be no less excruciating than the pain the Dutch would feel should a third final appearance culminate in the conclusion of an unhappy hat-trick of defeats.
An ironic twist of history means the Spanish find themselves in the position of Johan Cruyff’s Dutch side back in 1974 — pre-match favorites revered for carrying a torch for the “Beautiful Game.”
No Dutchman will need reminding that West Germany came from behind to win that match, but even Cruyff himself does not expect — or even hope — that the current generation of Dutch players will pull off a similar upset against his adopted homeland.
“I’m Dutch, but I support the football that Spain are playing,” Cruyff said.
The superiority of Spain’s players is underlined by their inability to find a place in their starting lineup for Cesc Fabregas and the readiness of their coach, Vicente Del Bosque, to relegate Fernando Torres to the bench.
He did so for the semi-final win over Germany and the energetic performance of Torres’ replacement, the young Barcelona winger Pedro, suggests he may well do so again today.
In contrast, not even the most luminous of the Oranje stars, Wesley Sneijder and Arjen Robben, would be guaranteed places in a Spanish team that, apart from growing in terms of experience and familiarity with each other, has barely changed from the one that triumphed at Euro 2008.
As Germany coach Joachim Loew put it, they click together so compellingly it is as if they are playing on autopilot.
It would be a mistake, though, to underestimate the resilience of a Dutch squad that has won all 14 competitive matches they have played since their own challenge at Euro 2008 ended in an unexpected quarter-final defeat by Russia.
Few people expected Bert van Marwijk’s squad to get past Brazil at the same stage in South Africa and, at halftime with the Selecao leading 1-0, that match appeared to be slipping away from them.
By the end, though, it was Brazil who looked bedraggled and shorn of confidence, their dream of a sixth World Cup shattered by Sneijder’s two second-half goals.
Those goals have helped to make Sneijder both a candidate for the player of the tournament award and a rival to Spain’s David Villa for the Golden Boot that goes to the top scorer — they both go into the final with five goals to their name.
Spain’s players have underscored the importance of stopping the Inter playmaker, with the primary responsibility falling to Sergio Busquets. The Barcelona midfielder, who shares the anchoring duties in the Spanish midfield with Xabi Alonso, has vowed that Sneijder will not be permitted “even the time to think.”
Sneijder has already collected Serie A, Italian Cup and Champions League medals this year, but he plays down the significance of his own role, suggesting instead that the self-belief instilled by van Marwijk and distilled to a concentrated essence by the squad’s long winning run represents the key to their hopes.
The Dutch coach can come across as an abrasive, even arrogant, character at times, but his repeated assertions that this group of Dutch players can achieve something that was beyond Cruyff and his peers in the 1970s and the Marco van Basten-Ruud Gullit generation of the late 1980s, appear to have worked their way into his squad’s collective psyche.
“We are going to beat Spain,” Sniejder said. “If we are not convinced of that, we will never do it. That’s what the coach tells us, just like Jose Mourinho did at Inter last season.”
Van Marwijk has also achieved something that eluded many of his predecessors in presiding over a happy camp, the in-fighting that has proved to be the Achilles heel of past squads having been conspicuous by its absence in South Africa.
“We are together as a group, we have achieved a lot already, but I tell my players there is always a next match,” van Marwijk said. “I don’t think about the finals Holland lost in 1974 and 1978. That is history, this is now.”
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