World Cup countdown: 47 fouls in the Battle of Johannesburg | OneFootball

The 2010 World Cup final was supposed a celebration of football’s ‘right way to play’. The moment two nations, who gave so much to the game, played out a feast for fans all over the world.

It turned out to be anything but.

Spain’s Tiki Taka had dominated the world game for a couple of years, with the reigning European champions boasting the likes of Andres Iniesta, Xavi and David Silva in the starting XI.

Netherlands meanwhile, were the grand fathers of it all. The inventors of Total Football changed the way the game was played back in 1974, and were at their first World Cup final since losing to Argentina in 1978.

Could the country of Johann Cruyff and Johnny Rep prove, finally, that they belonged at the top table of international football?

47 fouls, eight yellows and one red card later, the answer was an emphatic ‘no’.

Vicente del Bosque’s side were kicked completely out of the game, with Nigel de Jong almost being sentenced for manslaughter after his challenge on Xabi Alonso.

Ultimately though, La Roja got the better of the Kung-Fu Kicking Oranje thanks to an extra-time strike from Iniesta.

Johan Cruyff said it best, as he often did, after the final whistle: “This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football. If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they ended up losing. They were playing anti-football.”