It’s over. Well done South Africa. Congratulations Spain. And here, using the letters of the host nation, is the first of our looks back on the 2010 tournament …
S
– Spain, worthy winners on the night, and just about overall, in a generally unimpressive event
So SPAIN are top of the world, winners of the 2010 World Cup after at one stage looking more like heading home in disarray. But South Africa confounded so many people with the way it handled the event – think back to all those warnings, and not just from tabloid newspapers, of the likely security headaches – that it deserved to host a better final than the lame, petulant affair mustered by Spain and the Netherlands. Yet Spain generally played the better football, and triumphed with a late, late winner from Iniesta. The Dutch claimed injustice, a missed offside, but deserved nothing better after their cynical, ill-tempered display …
I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s game. It was played in an excellent spirit, there was a lot of good football and it ended up with five goals. To top it off, I went home and watched another cracker between Germany and Uruguay on the tattie field aka as Port Elizabeth.
A good answer to anyone who thought the third place final a fairly meaningless part of the World Cup. To watch and hear the Germans following the game in a seafront Med bar in France, you’d have thought Muller & Co had won the trophy. But fair play to them, it was a cracking game with drama from one of the tournament’s brightest lights, Diego Forlan, right to the end. Bill Taylor thinks it may turn out to have been THE final …
Let us hope Jeremy Robson changed his mind about not watching the so-called “bronze medal” match between Germany and Uruguay.
Otherwise, he missed a terrific game – good end-to-end, cut-and-thrust football with five well-taken goals and both Diego Forlan and Thomas Müller notching their fifth of the tournament.
Where to go for a Spanish ‘Who Are You?’ in response to Edgar Meyer’s Dutch preview of the 2010 World Cup final. Marta in Belfast? “Typical kneejerk fan – probably couldn’t name any players,” said her husband. The tapas bar I like so much in Ealing? It’s Portuguese. Let’s try the Spanish Embassy in London then. And into our lives, with many thanks to the press office for putting us his way, came Benjamin Leyton* a fan of Cadiz, a Chelsea steward and, best of all, a man who admires Sunderland and Darren Bent. Three-nil to Spain, he reckons …
At one stage, people were saying Spain might go out at group stage. Now you are a step away from winning the World Cup – what went right?
Tomorrow Salut! Sunderland brings you a very positive view of Spain, as you’d expect since it is our Who Are You? feature in which a Spanish supporter is interviewed; Jeremy Robson is not so sure, and gets his retaliation in first …
What a sad indictment it is that Spain will be contesting a World Cup final.
The only pleasure to be derived from this is vicarious. It’s great for the citizens of a true football nation to see their national side in the final for the very first time.
Edgar Meyer – Eddie G to pals – is a passionate Feyenoord fan, which will instantly endear him to those Sunderland supporters who established loose links with followers of that club a few years ago (probably a result of Mackems finding work in Rotterdam). There’s also a hint of Spanish in Eddie’s cosmopolitan family background, but he’s paying the price for earlier good fortune by living, for now, in Doncaster. Oh, and he’s approaching Sunday’s final in confident mood …
Salut! Sunderland: Not a classic World Cup, in most people’s eyes, but your country is in the final. Are you surprised to have got through or were you always confident?
I knew we’d reach a far round, definitely the quarters, maybe the semis, when we ended up with Brazil in the Quarters and beat them, I got alot more confident about going all the way.
He was our cultured polyglot, a man more interested in Durham Cathedral and Hadrian’s Wall than ringing up Anthony Stokes for a list of North-eastern nightspots. A never-say-die midfield rock who’d not shirk at the toughest tackle, or worry unduly about the ref’s cards. And now he’s gone, after just a season. Pete Sixsmith wishes him bon voyage …
My brother, who now lives in extreme penury in Thessaloniki, speaks well of Albanians. Hard workers, great work ethic, but inclined to bugger off for more money/ better working conditions at the first available opportunity.
We kept looking, and have now found fans from Holland and Spain to preview their countries’ appearance in the South Africa 2010 World Cup final. Always look on the bright side, we say: helps to fill a hole we might otherwise have devoted to plugging the new Sunderland replica kits if the only way of doing so hadn’t been with the sportswear equivalent of a wine “blind tasting” …
Well, Salut! Sunderland has signed up a Dutch fan and a Spanish supporter to answer our questions ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final. So thanks to our own Luke Harvey for putting us in touch with Edgar _ Eddie G – Meyer, a devoted follower of both Feyenoord and the Netherlands, and to the Spanish diplomatic service for nobly ensuring balance is preserved.
The first piece will run tomorrow, the second on Saturday morning.
Almost done in South Africa but it seems an awful long time since England were still involved. Luke Harvey tries to look forward four years to the next World Cup and wonders where our version of Mesut Ozil might come from …
Salut! Sunderland’s World Cup coverage has betrayed an uncanny resemblance to Christmas day in the Harvey household.
Much as we begin our Christmas Day as a united and happy family, we also began the World Cup with arms linked and faces smiling; we were ready to will England to victory.
And much like Christmas Day, it’s all ended in rather petty squabbling.
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