The World Cup is soon becoming a distant memory, the Final finally coming to a close 2 hours after kick-off on Sunday 11th July 2010 and now, we’re in that situation we experience every summer where we have the long wait for the new football season to start.
The long and short of this World Cup is that it sucked. It sucked hard. From the god awful coverage from both ITV and the BBC, to the complete lack of crowd personality with the Vuvuzela simply drowning out great chants and support with its incessant buzzing and the competitions rather poor football.
I’ve watched World Cup’s regularly since Italia ’90, so this was my sixth and I think it’s safe to say that this was my least favourite. We’ll get this out of the way first… I really don’t like England, I feel no heart and passion for the side, nor do I fall into the common misnomer that England are a major side, so going into this competition, as with other World Cups, I wasn’t in a position whereby if England were eliminated far too early it wouldn’t affect my enjoyment of the tournament. Of course I want them to win and do well, but if they don’t then I’m really not bothered. Some people do seem surprised by this, they can’t understand how I can’t get behind my country (albeit only half, I genuinely feel more passion for the efforts given by the Scottish despite a lesser quality squad) when I was born here, especially when I’m so passionate about football on a regular basis and be a die hard Man Utd fan. The simple answer is that I support Manchester United every single second of every single day, I’ve been to see them countless times live, I watch every single game and follow the news every day, with England they don’t play too often, Friendly’s are pointless and major tournaments are only every 2 years. In Lehman’s terms, I’m full-time Man Utd and England are a summer job.
The first round of the World Cup saw teams going out there not to lose rather than going out there to win. Games were cagey events and, if I’m being honest, the quality of football just wasn’t up to snuff and the overall tournament statistics go some way to proving this, with the 2010 World Cup having less shots on target than any other World Cup in history. The games did improve over time, but barely and no games reached the quality of Argentina vs Mexico from World Cup ’06 in Germany, which is one of my favourite, if not my favourite, International games of all time.
The final saw the Dutch, who had played solid football all tournament against a stuttering and rather boring Spanish side and, much like the rest of the tournament, it also disappointed. The Dutch, instead of focussing on what they can do, as they did against the Brazilians, went all Man Utd against Barcelona, and tried to stop the opposition, resulting in some of the worst tackling you will see in a major tournament. The Spanish of course were no saints, throwing themselves to the floor and surrounding the referee waving imaginary cards. It was a case of all my least favourite things in football on display from both sides. Sods law then that it would be a refereeing mistake to not award a corner resulting in yet another last minute winner from Spain.
All in all it was clear that South Africa was never the right place to hold the World Cup, and thankfully it won’t be there again for a while. We’ve just sat through a month of one of the most instantly forgettable International football and now I’m really hoping that the footballing seasons ahead will allow us to forget that rubbish.
One thing good did come from the World Cup though, and that’s a realization of just how good Martin Tyler and Andy Gray are as commentators. Every single pairing on terrestrial TV World Cup coverage were shockingly bad.
