World Cup 2010 - Dutch coach Bert Van Marwijk expresses his disappointment
Spain beat Netherlands in the final of the FIFA 2010 World Cup to claim their first world title, but the Dutch were left wondering what might have been wrong as they fell at the final hurdle for the 3rd time.
Dutch coach Bert Van Marwijk was not satisfied by the performance of the English Referee Howard Webb and said that he was clearly influenced by Spain.
The Dutch coach said that Spain showed their disapproval when they got to know that Webb would be officiating in the final, as he was the man in charge when they lost their first match to Switzerland. He said that the referee was very unconvincing to him and was not able to control the match at all.
He did clarify himself by saying that the best team won, but still when one looks at the way Webb handled the game it was disappointing. The fact that Spain showed their anger over the appointment of the English Referee definitely did have some bearing on his performance.
Howard Webb gave away no less than 14 yellow cards and sent off John Heitinga from Netherlands, Marwijk said that he has no reservations about the sending off of his player, but Spain should have been reduced to 10 men if Puyol was dealt with properly when he challenged Arjen Robben, He said that the 2nd incident with Robben should have definitely sent him off but Webb decided to keep his cards in his pocket.
The coach rubbished the claims that Netherlands came out with a mentality of being aggressive and using hard tackles, he said that he had only told his team to play more attractive football.
He said that it is simply not the Dutch style to commit ugly fouls; he went on to say that Netherlands are the ones who gave the world ‘Total Football’ so how can the same team play a game with a rough approach. He said that it was just a very tense game and both set of players were simply trying too hard.
Marwijk said that all his team wanted to do was to play beautiful football but the team in front of them was simply of a different class. Moreover, he said his team needed to have an extraordinary day to get the better of the European champions.
He said that his team was tactically sound and did carry out the plans almost perfectly, and only if they had taken their chances in normal time it would have been a whole different story.
Marwijk went on to say that a World Cup final is the biggest game of any player’s life so he does not hold anyone from his team responsible, sometimes the easiest of chances cannot be put away and at the same time the most difficult ones are scored off. He said that he would have loved to have been on the winning side even it meant not playing beautiful football, but as it turned out playing good football is the way to go as Spain proved. Marwijk said that the way that the goal came was less than ideal and he would have felt better if his team had lost to a goal that was more worthy of winning the World Cup, he reiterated that he does not undermine the quality of football on display by the Spaniards and admits that they played an excellent match.
The Dutch manager ended by saying that it does hurt to lose a 3rd final. There is a generation back home who have now seen all 3 final losses and would have loved to have finally seen their team on top of the world, but still in an year’s time the team will be back better and well prepared.
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