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Spain wins FIFA World Cup title

Spain stunned the Netherlands to win their first World Cup this morning in sensational fashion with a goal in the last minutes of extra time.

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Spain stunned the Netherlands to win their first World Cup this morning in sensational fashion with a goal in the last minutes of extra time.

Aussie viewers watched on live from 3:30am AEST on SBS as the two Euro-teams battled it out.

With the scoreless match inching toward a penalty shootout, and the Netherlands down to 10 men, Andres Iniesta collected a pass from Cesc Fabregas to fire home from close range and break Dutch hearts four minutes from the final whistle.

It was the first time the European champions had reached a World Cup final and a bitter disappointment for the Netherlands who finished runners-up for the third time after previously losing the 1974 and 1978 finals.

It was also the first triumph by a European side outside their continent.

The result caused agony in the Netherlands and ecstasy in Madrid where fans shed tears of joy and fireworks went off all over the city. More than 10O,000 people had gathered to watch on giant screens and many went hoarse with screams of joy.

In contrast, Dutch cities became deadly silent as their dream of finally winning the trophy evaporated. Some 180,000 fans trudged away quietly from Amsterdam’s museum square.

The game was far from the classic final to Africa’s first World Cup that many had hoped for from the two most impressive teams in the tournament.

The closer included an appearance from Nelson Mandela and a performance by Shakira.

Source: Reuters

15 Responses

  1. I was extremely disappointed by the quality of commentators used for the WC final. Commentating is a very different skill to analysing or reporting. Craig Foster rants, mentions irrelevant things and is repetitive. He is not a commentator and he should not have been allowed anywhere near such an important game. David Basheer is an okay reporter and a nice man, but again is not a proper commentator. I cringed at how many times he made basic mistakes and how many times he mispronounced names. (It’s not as though the players were a surprise. And this is SBS!) I realise the legendary Martin Tyler was poached by ESPN, but that’s no excuse. SBS could have used one of the other professional commentators we heard during the event itself, or even paid to use the ESPN feed and supplemented it with studio analysis before and after the game, at half time etc. I know I’m not the only person who felt this way so I hope they will take the criticism on board. It’s a shame too because SBS did a very commendable job overall in covering the WC.

  5. @Paull: “what possessed the germans to come up with an idea of putting an octopus in a tank and making it choose which country it will eat from”

    That’s quite tame when compared with some of the ideas a few of them came up with 75 years ago.

  7. Great job SBS for covering this year’s World Cup! Shame we did not hear the voice of the authoritative Martin Tyler (who called the match for ABC America and ESPN) and we got David Basheer instead.

  8. Nice wrap-up, David – it’s good to see some diversification beyond just TV. Perhaps you should start a sporting spinoff. You could call it Sports Tonight… oh, wait.

  9. Just imagine if it had gone to Nine – instead of Santo, Sam and Ed we could have had Sam Newman and Eddie doing something similar. I would have watched it.

  10. Fair dinkum, you have got to hate that octopus, always picking the winning team. How on earth does it know? More importantly, what possessed the germans to come up with an idea of putting an octopus in a tank and making it choose which country it will eat from.

  14. Well done SBS on a great job. May the World Cup stay on SBS and never go back to Channel 9 or the other major commercial networks ever again.

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