The 2010 FIFA World Cup hosted by South Africa comes to a close today with the championship match being played in Johannesburg between The Netherlands and Spain.Team USA actually won their group and were poised to make a long knockout stage run but unfortunately lost to Ghana to end their South African business trip.
Hey soccer's only our fifth best sport in the States, but it'll be a different story at next month's FIBA World Basketball Championships for Men.
I'm also proud of Team USA and the gritty way they played. A few more breaks and they may have gone a long way in this 2010 World Cup.But we'll have to wait like everybody else on the planet except for Brazil to qualify for the next FIFA World Cup tournament in 2014.
Back to the World Cup title game. The FIFA world number 4 ranked Netherlands finished atop Group E and knocked off Slovakia 2-1, FIFA Number one world ranked Brazil 2-1 and Uruguay 3-2 to get to the finals.
The FIFA world number 2 ranked Spain got off to a rough start. They were upset 1-0 by Switzerland in their opening Group H match but recovered to win the group.
In the knockout round Spain got into an interesting pattern of being scoreless at halftime, then coming up with a second half goal to send them to the next round.
They beat FIFA world number 3 ranked Portugal, Paraguay and FIFA world number 6 ranked Germany by identical 1-0 scores to reach their first World Cup final.It will be the first FIFA world championship for whatever team comes out on top. Will it be the Netherlands, who are in their third final but so far haven't gone home with the big prize?
Or will Spain once again keep it scoreless until halftime, then come up with the golden second half goal and make it hold up for their first ever FIFA world title?
I'll be tuned in with the rest of the planet to find out.
