Quote Originally Posted by Dark Dragon View Post
Both Spain and Netherlands plays defensive style football ala Italy in the last match. The result was a dull long match full of terrible fouls, calls and dives. Hardly fitting of a final match of the tournament.

The referees in this cup have been nothing short of garbage. There were so many bad calls that ended up costing some teams their match.
The final match was a mess because the Netherlands decided that the only way to stop Spain was to hack them down. To an extent, it was a strategy that worked as the Spanish could not play like they did against the Germans. Netherlands was consequently able to push forwards and the Spanish were forced to defend on several occassions. This game did not go according to Spain's gameplan. Honestly, the referee ruined the game by not enforcing discipline properly. He was very careful not to double book anyone early on(he was constantly checking his list), only giving yellow cards to people who hadnt been cautioned before. The Spanish came to play but eventually got sick of the Dutch tactics and decided to embellish much later on. The whole game would have been different if the referee had sent a Dutch player off in the first half. Both Di Jong and Van Bommel could have easily been kicked out of the game.

What Holland did is hardly comparable to Italy in previous tournaments. Most people in general hate the Italians, and that seems to translate towards a hatred for everything they do. But Holland definitely wasnt defending like Italy. The Italians of the past have focused on clean technical defending. It was never about conceding fouls. I could watch clinical defending like that all day. Also this notion that Italians dive more than anyone else is plain ridiculous. For the past 16 years, I have seen almost every other big team dive alot more than the Italians. Brazil, Germany, France and even Spain do it alot more than Italy.