Would you believe me if I told you that all approaches have been tried and this team remains almost unbeatable, what with a 53/2 match record over the past three years?
Seriously, why is it so hard for people to understand that we finally have our Golden Generation?
Yup, they are. But as I’ve been saying all along, we’re better.
Sorry pal. You’ve been setting yourself up all thread long.
K.O.
Congratulations, RedFury.
But you’re making it harder to root for La Furia Roja with every additional post you make. 
Germany wasn’t the same team as they were the past 2 games. Perhaps Spain’s ball control game was frustrating the youngsters. At the end of the day, all games are about matchups. Spain is clearly not a good matchup for Germany. I’m certainly impressed with Iniesta and Xavi more than ever. You can’t take the ball away from them. They’re like the Steve Nash and John Stockton of soccer.
While Spain dominated, they’re only goal was flukish with the corner kick finding Puyol’s head perfectly. These kinds of plays are like holes-in-one in golf. Only great players can make such plays with any significant probability, but there’s still an awful lot of luck involved.
Congrats on the win. I’m truly happy for Spain. While my Real Madrid jersey has Kaka on the back, I still picked Spain to win…
Now, on to Sunday.
Because few people would have seen many of those games beyond those in this World Cup, which includes a defeat to the mighty Switzerland. They’d probably have a different opinion if they had a broader view.
Good luck on Sunday and congratulations on getting to the final.
Congratulations to Spain, a well-deserved victory!
A couple of differences made Spain the much better side in this match, the most crucial one was attitude: Spain wanted to win this match, Germany didn’t want to lose it.
This was already evident in the formation: Löw chose the most conservative option to substitute the cheeky Müller, while del Bosque added, as feared, Pedro who did not just give his team the width they needed so much but also provided them with the carefreeness and sass that Germany totally lacked without their suspended player.
And while Spain immediately found its shape and showed its well-known passing system, the German team fell back so deep that they had little chance to do their thing: disrupt Spain’s play and attack in return.
Spain started with confidence, Germany with none. Consequently, the first team grew more and more with every minute, while the other one shrank. I have rarely seen so many easy mistakes by our team, even passes over 4 or 5 metres went nowhere which meant that the players wasted opportunity after opportunity to a) gain confidence with a controlled build-up of their play, b) scare the opponent with regular well-timed and precise counter-strikes to force them to give up their extremely high line or, better yet, make them pay for it.
The players did not just stand too deep, they also clustered, which added to our inability to switch to attack speedily and easily because we were not tactically spread over the field.
We totally lacked the awareness of space that had made us so dangerous before and to make matters worse, we lacked mobility too: no one swarmed out when we had the ball, no one already stood or moved to the positions between the defence lines of Spain.
It’s all right to be cautious when playing Spain, but it’s fatal to be afraid. When everyone thinks of defence first, the other side can attack at will.
The first half was therefore totally wasted and if Spain had shown its pre-Cup cold-bloodedness, the match could have been over already.
But Manuel Neuer showed his potential and at least Schweinsteiger was unimpressed by the opponent and ironed out mistake after mistake of his nervous team mates and seized every opportunity to jump start an attack.
But these two could not inspire the whole team and though Löw chose to add the right guy (Marcel Jansen is one of those guys who have to consult an encyclopedia to know about timidity), he should have changed the whole wing, adding also Aogo to allow the two players from Hamburg to work as defence/offence partners on Spain’s more vulnerable side. Leaving Podolski on the field meant that he and Jansen would distrupt each other’s lanes of attack and muddy our shape even more (Löw, you tried it before and it failed then, why try again? – And I won’t even talk about adding Gomez later instead of Marin or Kießling).
Adding Kroos for Trochowski was a good move but its impact showed that the youngster should have started from the beginning; and it was rather Lahm on this wing who failed to seize the opportunity to work with Kroos to restore our attacking shape there and unburden the middle by forcing the Spanish midfield more into their direction (like Lahm/Müller did in every other match before).
It took a goal by Spain to start an offence. Germany had a couple of chances but failed to score and Spain didn’t seize any opportunity to seal our fate.
Well, I have to admit, I’m angry. Two years ago, Spain was so much better that our team was simply unable to cope.
Now, they could have put up a real fight but were too timid to play their game. They choked in crunch time and proved that they are not yet ready to be champions. Spain is.
At least, I am free now to go on holiday a couple of days earlier; my wife will be delighted and the children won’t mind to get rid of us sooner than expected :).
Yup, it’s only football, wintertime. Now you can enjoy the final without a hint of nervousness.
Congrats to Spain, I’d really had prefered to play the Germans in the final - for multiple reasons. I’m a bit conflicted about what to expect for the final as I’ve been quite disappointed with Spain’s end product. Don’t get me wrong, they are brilliant at the midfield passing game, but they seem to have a hard time to actually get a good shot on goal, let alone an actual goal. It mystifies me how a team with so much possesion in the final third has managed to score 7 goals…
I’m interested to hear Red Fury’s take on this. Is it just that the oppositions has so many people back or are they really missing Torres that much; the only player that consistently looks like he’ll score is Villa.
For the final I’m a bit scared that things will fall into place for the Spanish, and they’ll run away with it. If this doesn’t happen I don’t know what to expect, on the one hand Spain will have a lot of possesion and on the other hand we always score (usually more than one); so will it be possesion for Spain and one goal between the 60th and 70th minute, with the dutch scoring two (possibly deflected shots from Sneijder)? I’d certainly be happy with that
edit: HUP HOLLAND
Because any team with a lot of possession is invariably facing a team with a lot of defenders. That makes goals hard to score when the opposing defense is solid.
Also Torres, who up until last night, was the starting forward and has been unable this WC to score even the simplest push-ins.
Sure, there’s luck with any given goal, but it’s not luck to pile up a bunch of chances.
I mean, you’re not saying Spain was flukishly unlucky when Puyol missed a much easier header earlier in the match, right?
I think that I already acknowledged this by stating that Spain dominated the game.
There are so many instances of flukish bad luck during a match for both teams that it’s not worth mentioning, especially when both teams are world class. Goals are few and far between, but chances are more common. That said, Spain definitely deserved the win. Even if Germany had scored the flukish goal and Spain didn’t, Spain was better.
I certainly wouldn’t call that goal a fluke. What do you think he was trying to do?
Fantastic goal.
I called it ‘flukish’, and not a fluke. Like most corners, the kicker tried to get the ball into an area where one of his teammates can head it in. Most of these aren’t successful, but this one happened to be one of the rare ones that are. There happened to be no Germans in the area to prevent it. Spain was also fortunate that another teammate (Pique?) was just far away to not interfere with Puyol. Plays like that are at minimum 80% luck. This must be obvious, unless you think that he meant to kick the ball at the exact spot that Puyol was on the field, with Pique just there as a distraction.
It’s not unfortunate that there were no Germans in the area to prevent it; it was bad marking.
Hardly a fluke if he’s done it before; and they have. Watch it here:
Mundial: El gol de Puyol fue igual que el del 2-6 en el Bernabéu
Xavi to Puyol…and bang!
Yes, it’s partly bad marking, partly a great cross and a big dash of finishing ability.
“ENGLAND IN THE WORLD CUP FINAL!”
Howard Webb is chosen as the referee - probably the only Englishman who has been on form during this World Cup…
I Wonder what the odds are on a first minute penalty for Holland…
I’ve been upset with Spain’s inability to simply shoot. It’s not that they’re missing Torres that much (though they are) but it’s quite simply that they aren’t shooting, they’re passing one or two times too many. Then you have times like in the semis game, with Pedro on a break and Torres on his left, wide open. Does Pedro pass? no, he tries to dribble it through 2 defenders. He had a great game, don’t get me wrong, but times like that make a guy who has money riding on Spain just cry 
It’ll be a very interesting game. Germany was the big scoring team of the cup, and Spain simply outplayed them in midfield and didn’t allow more than a handful of chances. I’m very much looking forward to it, just wish it was on at an earlier time slot =/ (it plays at 3:30am monday morning here, which probably means I’ll be taking a sick day)
I don’t get your point here at all. As far as I’m concerned, a fluke is generally when you are:
This is a pretty standard goal. A good cross (which may or may not have been aimed for Puyol - great ball either way, he’s either aiming for the player or the area) and a really top class header. Bad defending, but that’s not luck, and they punished it.
I have no idea where 80% luck comes from. Sure it’s not going to come off every time, but you could make that argument about any attacking play in football.
You want to see flukey goals, watch Sneijder’s goal for Holland the other day. Or against Brazil. There are a ton of flukey goals in football, but not this one.
Maybe flukish isn’t the right word, but these guys don’t have pinpoint precision over 50 yards. Let me ask you this: did any Spanish player know in advance of the play that the ball would curl to Puyol’s head at around 8 feet high, and that he would then head it into the top right corner? Of course not. At most they knew that Xavi (?) would curl it somewhere in the box and hopefully a Spainsh player would get enough of a head or leg on it to get it past the goalie.
I suppose the more corner kicks you generate, the more you’ll score via corners. So over time, the better team will get more goals from corners.
Um. Yes? That’s like, the main strategy for Spain on corners: let Xavi try to get to the two Spanish center backs, who are good at headers. They tried to do exactly that just earlier in the game, and will try it again on sunday.