Among the blaring of the ever-present vuvuzela — in its many thousands — it was appropriate that the team which played the best football in the past month walked away with the prize. Spain put on show soccer of the highest class, full of technical skill and breathtaking artistry and everything a doughty Holland could throw at them in Sunday night’s final at Johannesburg’s Soccer City proved to be inadequate when it came to the crunch. And fittingly, it was one of their two outstanding players who dealt the killer blow to The Netherlands’ hopes. Spain literally rode on the creative feet of Xavi Hernandes and Andres Iniesta to the final, with the latter providing the coup de grace in a footballing masterclass that was thrown into sharper focus by the dogged attritional football the Dutch resorted to for 120 minutes on the night. But then, this was a World Cup of many firsts — Africa hosting its maiden tournament in the face of widespread fears over crime, organisation, logistics, and what have you. Then there was the small matter of every one of the seven previous champions being eliminated before the final, from five-timers Brazil to one-off winners like England and France. That left the field open for a new winner, and though Holland have been here twice before, in 1974 and 1978, it was left to a team that previously never got past the quarter-final stage to walk away with the cherry.
Is this, therefore, the start of a new era in the sport? Brazil, once justly famed for their brilliant native skills, have given up the spine-tingling joy of the Joga Bonito for a more pragmatic approach that its fans would prefer to call pedestrian. Argentina’s little maestro Lionel Messi and Diego Forlan of Uruguay turned on the style but had to bow out of the running thanks to insufficient support. It was left to Spain — for years the home of two of football’s great clubs in Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona — to come up with a style of soccer that not only gladdened the hearts of the everyday fan, but also had the purists purring in pleasure. And the irony of it all will have escaped nobody. For years Spain were known for being among the most unprepossessing of football teams. Their style was the hard knock, and it took a Dutchman to bring artistry and beauty into their soccer. Johan Cruyff was the mastermind, along with Johan Neeskens of the Dutch team that entered the finals of the 1974 and 1978 tournaments only to lose, once to West Germany and the second time to Argentina. It is said of those teams that they preferred to play beautiful football at the cost of the result. Total Football was what it came to be called, and that is what Cruyff brought with him when he retired as a player and took over as coach of Barcelona. It took him a long time but vindication on Sunday night lay in the fact that as many as seven players from Barcelona — all products of its junior nurturing programme — stood on the field holding the World Cup trophy. For Holland, it will mean a return to the drawing board, for quite simply, when they were not hacking at Spanish ankles and knees, they were played off the park. And as a fitting capstone for the senior lot, it was one of them who walked away with the honour of being adjudged the best player of the tournament — the 31-year-old Uruguayan with the magic feet: Diego Forlan.