Spare us the fawning over Spain's 'beautiful game' - they weren't half as exciting as Germany

By Mike Walters in 2010 World Cup Blog

Published 11:28 12/07/10

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By Mike Walters

Tapas will become compulsory at meal times, Benidorm will be the next European city of culture and unions will demand three siestas a week.

As if there has not been enough fawning over the Spanish already, just wait until the most dangerous feline of all - the copycat - is at large.

Spain are the world champions, and muchos gazpacho to our Iberian cousins. They showed us the fundamental difference between a golden generation and a tinpot dynasty is to win, and hasta la vista for that.

Before every Premier League manager rushes out and buys a fat left-back from Murcia reserves you've never heard of, however, spare us the eulogies, the sermons and the full paella.

Sorry to throw Espana in the works, but from this observer's armchair the most enjoyable team to watch at the World Cup - as they were in 2006 - went out in the semi-finals. Good old Deutschland.

Yes, Spain deserved to win the World Cup final. Yes, Andres Iniesta and Xavi pass the ball nicely. And, yes, the Clogs of War got precisely what they deserved for turning a global showpiece into a grotesque kicking match.

But one man's salami is another man's chorizo, so please spare us the pundits' hogwash about the Spanish standing up for the beautiful game.

They scored eight goals in seven games. Big deal. Like Italy, the undeserving winners four years ago, they won the World Cup in binary.

They scrambled past Paraguay in the last eight, and their semi-final winner was a set piece straight from the training grounds of Blackburn or Stoke: corner, header, goal. When Sam Allardyce or Tony Pulis are the authors of such pragmatism, they are damned with faint praise; but when the Spanish do it, it's art.

And as for the final... we should boycott Edam and lay siege to our florists with bunches of daffodils instead of tulips. The future might be orange, but the present is black and blue.

Holland deserve no sympathy for a catalogue of hideous challenges, notably Nigel De Jong's kung-fu assault on Xabi Alonso, which were a desecration of their Total Football heritage.

But were the Spanish entirely blameless in referee Howard Webb's croupier deck of 14 cards? Not on your patatas fritas, they weren't.

Every time Webb was required to admonish a Dutch kick-boxer, he was picketed by at least four Spaniards - normally led by long-haired lobbyists Sergio Ramos and Carles Puyol - demanding all the colours of the rainbow from yellow to red.

They were rather less militant when Puyol hauled back Arjen Robben with impunity in the final, or when Ramos tripped Germany's Mesut Ozil in the semi-final and got away with it. Butter wouldn't have melted then, eh, senors?

Webb, incidentally, brought a lot of those cards on himself by failing to apply the laws of the game, especially during those 13 minutes of first-half anarchy when the ball appeared to be incidental to the main plot.

He should have stopped the game, ordered both captains to one side and administered an almighty public rollicking for the disgraceful spectacle which hijacked a football match.

Had that been a Premier League match - and, God knows, Webb has ruined a few of those in his time - there would have been at least one red card before half-time.

Anyway, congratulations to Spain. It's a fine achievement to be European champions and World Cup holders simultaneously, and at least they exposed the myth that European teams can't win the Holy Grail outside Europe itself.

But the great entertainers? Come off it, the biggest laugh we've had in the last month is watching the French implode. Spain may be the world champions, but this will always be the tournament where Thierry Henry and the Hand of Frog won the Champignons League.

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