World Cup Finals at Souled Out

After a long day shooting a pre-wedding session at Putrajaya, I headed over to Souled Out at Sri Hartamas to join my mates to watch the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa. It was a little more special as there was a Street Party going on at that time and the place was completely packed. Parking was scarce and so were the vuvuzelas.

Frankly the crowd was going wild and everyone seemed to have brought their own vuvuzelas which they happily blew throughout the night which made me sort of deaf. The place was completely packed to the point where there were a bunch of people standing up throughout the night (not counting those on the street of course) that they were blocking the big screens for those who were sitting down. Thank goodness that Souled Out had a number of large LCD TVs broadcasting the match as well.

Anyhow, back to the match.

Paul the Octopus predicted that Spain will win the world cup so I ended up supporting Netherlands as my client is from Netherlands and most of the colleagues were Dutch but most of all, they were the underdogs of the match.

Apparently, everyone else at Souled Out, including my friends, supported Spain.



The match started off quite nicely with Spain dominating most of the possession until the man of the match decided to show his true colours.



And that man was no other than, Howard Webb. The referee of the match and his favourite colour was yellow. By the 28th minute, 5 yellow cards were shown to both sides. At the end of the match, 14 yellow cards were awarded which also resulted in John Heitinga being sent off.

I think that really killed the game, players were a little more cautious and what made me furious were the number of dives from the players of both sides. But nearing the end you can see a little sort of biasness when the dutch side seemed to be on the shorter end.



The players tried to show their frustration and yet, nothing was done or given. But you can't also blame the referees, both teams had incredible chances only to waste it away. The game was then forced to go into extra time where Iniesta managed to score the goal which led Spain to their very first World Cup.



Frankly, I was kinda sad that Holland had to lose this way when Iniesta dove deliberately. This allowed them a free kick which eventually led to the goal. And to rub salt into the wounds, Iniesta scored the winning goal. The match overall was very uneventful mainly due to the lack of goals from both sides.



Technically, Spain deserves the win. I felt they dominated the game a lot more and their passing was very entertaining and executed brilliantly. Their set pieces were just amazing short of Puyol missing a couple of open headers in front of the goal but tactically, it was executed brilliantly!

In the end, as I would always tell my friends who says that football should start copying the Americans and start using instant replays to make decisions, referee error is always part of the match. But now, if instant replays would help reduce the number of dives a player take, I would gladly opt for the use of instant camera replays for the referees. This would at least make the game a lot "cleaner".

When I got back home at 5ish am, I caught my mum dancing away to victory because she had supported Spain all this time. Heh, I wonder if she liked the players more or not.