FIFA World Cup 2010: The Good The Bad And The Ugly
The World cup has finally come to a close, with Spain becoming World Champions for the first time in the country’s history. Along the course of the tournament, we witnessed many highs and lows that were displayed by the teams and players, here’s taking a look at some of those events.
Starting off with the good, Africa was given the opportunity to display to the world, its passion, spirit and love for the game and the African's delivered all of that and so much more. Had it not been for the energetic overly loud and party minded African crowd, the World Cup wouldn’t have been half as entertaining as it was. The hosts didn’t just cheer on their home team, but rather just rooted for everyone.
While the Spanish one nil score lines may suggest otherwise, the Spanish footballing tactics were ultimately one of the greatest positive aspects of the whole tournament. The Spaniards possession, retention and constantly attacking mentality, overcame the negative tactics that the World Cup has grown used to showcasing over the years.
The Spanish completed over three thousand five hundred passes over the course of the tournament and they finally went from being the greatest underachievers to being one of the greatest achievers of all time.
The underdogs however stole the show in South Africa. Teams such as New Zealand managed to complete in all their group stage matches without being beaten even once, teams such as Slovakia surprised everyone by beating former World Champion’s, Italy. Mexico and Uruguay, went much further than anyone would have even dreamt they would go.
Moving on to the bad, It doesn’t get any worse when a whole country is riding its fate on a single player or a group of players and they fail to deliver. The World Cup 2010 saw some of the biggest names in the world of football leave as nothing more than flops. Ronaldo, Messi and Rooney were all out shone by players who no one had even heard of. Whether this is a win for football or a fail, we will have to wait and see.
No World Cup is complete without a series of bad refereeing decisions. The 2010 edition on the tournament didn’t disappoint on that end. There were unjustifiable red cards, disallowed goals, bad offside calls and controversial goals allowed. Infact things got so out of hand that FIFA, finally admitted that may have to introduce Goal Line Technology for the next tournament.
Moving on to the Ugly. The tactics that the Dutch, used in the finals against Spain, were appalling to say the least. The millions of fans who were hoping to witness the best attacking game of the tournament were left highly disappointed. The Dutch realized they could not keep up with Spain so they tried to break their opponents. Players like van Bommel and De Jong were making more tackles than they ever had. Netherlands were more focused on breaking play rather than making it. But they failed to realize you can’t break it if magic made it, because Spain’s journey was nothing short of magical. So it was ultimately the poor tactics that were being used by the Dutch that led to their downfall.
Cheating at the World Cup stage is something that most people don’t even think about. But for some players it is the grandest of stages on which to display their skills. Keita’s attempt to make sure Kaka was shows a red and the way Capdevila acted against Portugal was an all time low even for those players. The most disgusting thing to witness however was Suarez celebrating after his blatant hand ball cost Ghana a place in the semi finals.
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