The World Cup gets new winner in Spain or Holland Sunday
A new winner will added to the World Cup winners list when two European teams that have never won the World Cup Holland and Spain clash in the final match of Africa’s first World Cup at the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg on Sunday night.
The last time the World Cup get a new winner was twelve years ago when another European team France won it as host nation beating Brazil 3-0 in the final with former three times World player of the year Zenedine Zidane scoring two goals with his head from corner-kicks.
Seven countries have won the World Cup so far. They are Uruguay, Brazil Argentina, Italy, Germany, England and France. The new winner on Sunday will increase it to eight and also increase the European winning teams to five.
This final will mark be the first ever for the European Champions Spain in the history of World Cup and the third for the Holland after losing to West Germany 2-1in 1974 and Argentina 3-1 four years later.
No doubt, the two teams deserve to be in the final as they’ve been very impressive throughout the tournament. Holland won all their matches on their way to the final beating Denmark 2-0, Japan 1-0 and Cameroon 2-1 in the group stage. They eliminated Slovakia 2-0 in the second round stage, Brazil 2-1 in the quarter final and Uruguay 3-2 in the semis.
After an excellent two years of producing good results by winning the European Nations Cup in 2008 and winning nearly all their matches in the World Cup qualifiers, Spain surprisingly got to a bad start in the finals in South Africa losing 1-0 to Switzerland in their opening match.
But they corrected their mistakes in their second match in their group against Honduras winning 2-0. They also won their final group match against Chile 2-1 before eliminating Portugal 1-0 in the second round stage. They went on to knock-out Paraguay 1-0 in the quarter-final and booked their place in the final after a narrow 1-0 over Germany in the semis.
The Holland-Spain clash is expected to be thrilling and exciting as the two teams play beautiful football by passing the ball well. It’ll not be the battle for the World Cup trophy alone but it’ll also be the contest of the highest goal scorer award and in my opinion the best player of the tournament award as well.
It’ll be David Villa of Spain versus Wesley Sneijder of Holland. Villa is currently the top goal scorer with five goals whist Sneijder has four and the two players in my opinion have been the two most impressive in the tournament and therefore should also battle for the best player award.
The good news for the two teams is that they’ll present their full strength squads as they have no suspension or major injury worries. The Holland starting line-up may likely be Rubben, Van Persie, Van Bommel Dirk Kuyt, Captain Van Bronckhorst, Sneijder Nigel De Jong, Mathijsen, Van Der Wiel, Heitinga and goalkepper Stekelenburg
Spain may likey start with players such as Villa, Iniesta, Xavi, Alonso, Puyol, Pique, Romos, Capedevila, Busquets, Pedro and goalkeeper Casillas who is the captain.
No team will start as the underdogs or favourites; this makes it very difficult to predict who will win. It’s a complete balance match that can go in either way.
So what makes Africa’s first ever World Cup unique is that it’ll have a new winner for the first time since 1998.
Credit: Sports Writers Association of Sierra Leone (SWASAL). Partial sponsors: Mercury International
By Mohamed Fajah Barrie at the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa
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