World Cup Final Preview

The Dutch Total Football takes on Spain and their dominant passing game for the World Cup Trophy

By Henry Whitfield

After a month of matches, hundreds of goals and countless memories that will live on for a lifetime, we have finally reached the end of our World Cup journey: The World Cup Final is here.

We’ve seen the old Italians get stuck in the group stage, a surprise run by Uruguay, England crash out against a young, upstart German side, Maradona’s dream fall apart and most impressively, we got to see a talented French team implode and surrender during a World Cup.

Now we are left with two nations, an experienced Spain that were pre-tournament favourites to lift the Jules Rimet trophy and a resilient Dutch side that has been pushed forward by the outstanding play of Wesley Sneijder and Arjen Robben.

Here’s the prediction for today’s match:

Netherlands 3 – 2 Spain

Yesterday, I predicted a 4-2 win for Germany over Uruguay and they very nearly gave me that scoreline, but a resilient Uruguayan side fought hard and kept the score close until the very last kick of the match.

So without further adieu, here is my breakdown of today’s match:

Netherlands 3 – 2 Spain

If you’ve checked out week’s edition of Haligonia Sports, you saw me break down the Dutch and Spanish sides with Bill McLean and you heard the reasoning behind my predictions.

If you haven’t, well you should go check it out right away for more detail on my thoughts of today’s match, but for now I think this game comes down to two players: David Villa and Wesley Sneijder. The match will come down to whoever has the better game and my money is on the Dutch midfielder to play phenomenal and single-handedly give his country their first World Cup trophy.

Look for the Dutch keeper to keep his side in it and make some fantastic saves, while Arjen Robben will draw a red card from at least one Spanish player. The Dutch will control for much of the second half and pull away, not allowing Spain to carry out their usual plan of attack.

That’s it for today, but check back after the match as I will be doing a minute by minute re-cap and breakdown of today’s match.