Best shot

I have learnt to be wary of proselytising about football. The last time I tried was the final of the World Cup in South Africa, Spain versus the Netherlands, two teams with a reputation for skilful, attacking play and thoughtful rather than hopeful passing. These two sides, I explained to people whom football fans like to call ‘neutrals’ (it means they’re not interested), would show how the game is meant to be played at its most refined — especially if your most recent encounter with football was watching England’s concrete-booted performances in that tournament, culminating in ignominious exit against an unusually exuberant Germany.

I was half right. Spain played their neat, probing, clever game, while Holland went for full-frontal assault, approaching the match more in the spirit of Bruce Lee than Johan Cruyff. Afterwards, the greatest Dutchman ever to wear the orange shirt summed up the national embarrassment. Holland, he said, played in an ‘ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style’.