by Ian Farquharson

Created on: July 10, 2010   Last Updated: July 15, 2010

The eyes of all soccer fans were turned to the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg on Sunday 11 July 2010 when the final of the FIFA World Cup took place. After four weeks of non stop soccer action, two countries were left standing and the final of the tournament matched Spain against Holland. These are two of the biggest soccer nations in the world, although to date neither had been successful in the World Cup. The conclusion of the 2010 tournament therefore resulted in the name of a new country being added to the seven who had previously won the World Cup trophy.

Although never having won the trophy, Holland has a reasonable record in the World Cup. They have qualified for nine of the nineteen tournaments to date and have twice previously contested a World Cup final. This was in the 1970’s when the great Holland side featuring stars such as Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskins played in the 1974 and 1978 finals. However, on both occasions they lost out to the host nation with Germany defeating them in 1974 and Argentina doing likewise in 1978. The current Holland team therefore had a chance to go one step further and actually claim the greatest prize in international soccer.

Prior to the final they were on a streak of 25 games unbeaten. This included all their World Cup qualifying games plus the friendly games in the run up to the tournament. In the World Cup proper they won all six games they played up to the final. This included a quarter final defeat of Brazil and this would have been a major boost to their confidence as Brazil were one of the big favorites to win the trophy. During the tournament Holland had a number of top stars playing well. Wesley Sneijder had been in great goal scoring form. Up front Arjen Robben and Dirk Kuyt had been linking up well and at the back the team captain Giovanni van Bronckhorst had been marshaling the defense well. Considering the current winning run that they had achieved, Holland entered the final in confident mood.

For a national soccer team of the stature of Spain, it is amazing that 2010 was their first World Cup final. Spanish club sides such as Barcelona and Real Madrid regularly dominate European soccer and over the years Spain has produced some of the best players in the world. However they appear to have had a World Cup hoodoo over the years and have regularly underachieved. However the current Spanish team is one of the best ever and they demonstrated this by winning Euro 2008, defeating Germany in the final.

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