World Cup 2010 Final Match Spain vs Netherlands Notes
Version 1, 6:28 AM 7/12/2010
I still have not watched the first half of the 2010 final between Spain and Netherlands, and I have watched the second half and the overtime only once. When I do some more watching of the game I will revise this blog-post and report the revision in this post.
Spain and the Netherlands both failed when the attacker was near the goal and had only the goalie to beat, or only the goalie and one defender to beat. The mistakes consisted of: shooting instead of cutting to the left or right with the ball (NED); dribbling straight ahead instead of cutting left or right (ESP); cutting to the right into a goalie or the defender when the proper course of action would have been to dribble straight ahead or shoot (ESP, NED, ESP).
In my previous blog-post I discussed how in the semifinal, Spain had an advantage over Germany derived from the Spanish dribbler moving towards the German defender, which gave the dribble the choice of cutting either to the left or to the right. Seems that my advice re this advantage was taken too literally. Repeatedly players dribbling the ball, unaccountably and strangely, dribbled the ball towards the goalie or defender when they should have shot the ball or cut away from the goalie or defender and then shot the ball.
Although advantage can be derived by dribbling the ball towards the defender before making cutting left or right with the ball, such is not always the wise thing to do.
Generally, dribbling towards the defender before cutting this way or that, is a good choice for a dribbler when the dribbler is too far away from the goal to shoot, and the defender is in front of the dribbler. When the dribbler is close enough to the goal to shoot, and the defender it to the side of the dribbler as opposed to in front of the defender, dribbling towards the defender is less often the wise choice.
Repeatedly, shots were taken close to the goal, and were stopped by the goalie's feet with the goalie's body lying on the ground. This should not happen as it is not that difficult to loft the ball over the goalie's feet when the goalie is lying on the ground.
Three times Spaniards had the ball in a position where the smart thing to do would have been to cut to the left, fake a shot, and cut back to the right, or, cut to the right, fake a shot, and cut back to the left. This they did not do, result shot blocked, shot missed, ball lost etc. This dribbling on a slant faking a shot and cutting back is something even us Americans could do in high school.
Villa missed an easy shot near the Dutch goal, and Ramos missed a relatively easy header off a cross near the Dutch goal. Villa also tried to volley a long cross into the Dutch goal and missed badly.
Seems Villa like the rest of us has seen too many videos featuring the '100 greatest goals of all time' etc. One of these video clips featured an English player volleying a long cross into the goal, Villa apparently attempted to imitate the incredible shot.
When watching such videos, we should stop and realize that just as in music in America there have been these musical artists known as 'one hit wonders', who produced one great song and nothing else of note, so also, many of these 'greatest goals of all time', were freaks involving players doing something that they were able to do only once in their entire careers. I don't see it as wise to imitate such freak events. It would be smarter to imitate 'great goals', of the type that players have been able to accomplish repeatedly.
We've often read of how persons have been just once in their lives filled with superhuman strength and done things like lift a car off of an accident victim beneath the car--we should not forget that these heroic persons were able to achieve superhuman strength only once in their entire lives.
Simply from timing the speed of my shots with a stopwatch, I've noticed that about one in a hundred shots accidentally features very high speed with little effort, due to that rare combination accidentally coming together featuring the ball the body the foot all in exactly the right positions.
Apparently again watching the FIFA 2010 Finals, we witnessed the phenomenon wherein due to concentration on more difficult skills, the basic easy skills acquired early in youth become rusty, decline in terms of competence-level. Again we saw how the basic underemphasized strategic wisdom, is to in practice spend neither too much or too little time working on a given skill.
Twice I saw Spaniards making a mistake which I had noted in a previous blog-post re the 2010 World Cup: failing to anticipate defensive movements that were predictable. As a result, their passes were intercepted.
Both Spanish and Dutch players manifested a certain level of a lack of competence with bouncing balls. In one instance, a Dutchman got a bouncer near the goal, with time and without a Spaniard near him, but he was too clumsy and slow controlling the bouncer. A bouncer came to a Spaniard after the ball bounced off the Dutch goalie after the Dutch goalie fisted the ball away; the Spaniard had plenty of time and space to start something tricky like an aerial dribble towards the Dutch goal, but he just shot the bouncer and the shot did not even come close to scoring.
I napped through the entire game, not watching it, until about five minutes before the winning goal in the 116th minute, which occurred about five minutes after I started watching the game, which was after the Red Card evicted Heitinga of the Netherlands.
I wonder, was it coincidence that the one goal of the game was not scored until five minutes after I started watching the game about 110 minutes after the game started? Was is it coincidence, that the winning goal was similar to the first shot I took in front of the scoffer the Spanish/Guatemalan gentleman named 'Biro' (in front of Biro, I shot a bouncer into the right side of the goal from the left of the goal with my left from about 20 yards out, see June 30 entry of my soccer log).
Was it a coincidence that the referee of the match was Howard Webb, who looked almost like a twin of my uncle when my uncle was a young man? Was it a coincidence, that while I was sleeping prior to starting to watch the match after the match was already in overtime, I dreamt that the day of the match was my father's birthday even though actually it was not my father's birthday?
@2010 David Virgil Hobbs
I still have not watched the first half of the 2010 final between Spain and Netherlands, and I have watched the second half and the overtime only once. When I do some more watching of the game I will revise this blog-post and report the revision in this post.
Spain and the Netherlands both failed when the attacker was near the goal and had only the goalie to beat, or only the goalie and one defender to beat. The mistakes consisted of: shooting instead of cutting to the left or right with the ball (NED); dribbling straight ahead instead of cutting left or right (ESP); cutting to the right into a goalie or the defender when the proper course of action would have been to dribble straight ahead or shoot (ESP, NED, ESP).
In my previous blog-post I discussed how in the semifinal, Spain had an advantage over Germany derived from the Spanish dribbler moving towards the German defender, which gave the dribble the choice of cutting either to the left or to the right. Seems that my advice re this advantage was taken too literally. Repeatedly players dribbling the ball, unaccountably and strangely, dribbled the ball towards the goalie or defender when they should have shot the ball or cut away from the goalie or defender and then shot the ball.
Although advantage can be derived by dribbling the ball towards the defender before making cutting left or right with the ball, such is not always the wise thing to do.
Generally, dribbling towards the defender before cutting this way or that, is a good choice for a dribbler when the dribbler is too far away from the goal to shoot, and the defender is in front of the dribbler. When the dribbler is close enough to the goal to shoot, and the defender it to the side of the dribbler as opposed to in front of the defender, dribbling towards the defender is less often the wise choice.
Repeatedly, shots were taken close to the goal, and were stopped by the goalie's feet with the goalie's body lying on the ground. This should not happen as it is not that difficult to loft the ball over the goalie's feet when the goalie is lying on the ground.
Three times Spaniards had the ball in a position where the smart thing to do would have been to cut to the left, fake a shot, and cut back to the right, or, cut to the right, fake a shot, and cut back to the left. This they did not do, result shot blocked, shot missed, ball lost etc. This dribbling on a slant faking a shot and cutting back is something even us Americans could do in high school.
Villa missed an easy shot near the Dutch goal, and Ramos missed a relatively easy header off a cross near the Dutch goal. Villa also tried to volley a long cross into the Dutch goal and missed badly.
Seems Villa like the rest of us has seen too many videos featuring the '100 greatest goals of all time' etc. One of these video clips featured an English player volleying a long cross into the goal, Villa apparently attempted to imitate the incredible shot.
When watching such videos, we should stop and realize that just as in music in America there have been these musical artists known as 'one hit wonders', who produced one great song and nothing else of note, so also, many of these 'greatest goals of all time', were freaks involving players doing something that they were able to do only once in their entire careers. I don't see it as wise to imitate such freak events. It would be smarter to imitate 'great goals', of the type that players have been able to accomplish repeatedly.
We've often read of how persons have been just once in their lives filled with superhuman strength and done things like lift a car off of an accident victim beneath the car--we should not forget that these heroic persons were able to achieve superhuman strength only once in their entire lives.
Simply from timing the speed of my shots with a stopwatch, I've noticed that about one in a hundred shots accidentally features very high speed with little effort, due to that rare combination accidentally coming together featuring the ball the body the foot all in exactly the right positions.
Apparently again watching the FIFA 2010 Finals, we witnessed the phenomenon wherein due to concentration on more difficult skills, the basic easy skills acquired early in youth become rusty, decline in terms of competence-level. Again we saw how the basic underemphasized strategic wisdom, is to in practice spend neither too much or too little time working on a given skill.
Twice I saw Spaniards making a mistake which I had noted in a previous blog-post re the 2010 World Cup: failing to anticipate defensive movements that were predictable. As a result, their passes were intercepted.
Both Spanish and Dutch players manifested a certain level of a lack of competence with bouncing balls. In one instance, a Dutchman got a bouncer near the goal, with time and without a Spaniard near him, but he was too clumsy and slow controlling the bouncer. A bouncer came to a Spaniard after the ball bounced off the Dutch goalie after the Dutch goalie fisted the ball away; the Spaniard had plenty of time and space to start something tricky like an aerial dribble towards the Dutch goal, but he just shot the bouncer and the shot did not even come close to scoring.
I napped through the entire game, not watching it, until about five minutes before the winning goal in the 116th minute, which occurred about five minutes after I started watching the game, which was after the Red Card evicted Heitinga of the Netherlands.
I wonder, was it coincidence that the one goal of the game was not scored until five minutes after I started watching the game about 110 minutes after the game started? Was is it coincidence, that the winning goal was similar to the first shot I took in front of the scoffer the Spanish/Guatemalan gentleman named 'Biro' (in front of Biro, I shot a bouncer into the right side of the goal from the left of the goal with my left from about 20 yards out, see June 30 entry of my soccer log).
Was it a coincidence that the referee of the match was Howard Webb, who looked almost like a twin of my uncle when my uncle was a young man? Was it a coincidence, that while I was sleeping prior to starting to watch the match after the match was already in overtime, I dreamt that the day of the match was my father's birthday even though actually it was not my father's birthday?
@2010 David Virgil Hobbs
Labels: Netherlands, soccer, soccer strategy, soccer tactics, Spain, world cup
posted by David Virgil at 7:24 AM
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