The best team won. If anyone wants to maintain that the Premiership is better than La Liga then please post your incredibly convincing arguments using the ‘Share Your Thoughts’ link.
Brazil 2014: South American winner, 50% chance of a European finalist, a final with lots of goals with the first one coming before half time. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…
We’ll know if we get 2018 on 2nd December. But apart from our comprehensive ‘what went wrong’ article (which is still being written), the 2010 World Cup is now in the books; at least we won’t have to listen to those bloody Vuvuzelas anymore.
Congratulations to Spain on a well deserved win.
As for which league is better? The World Cup really doesn’t prove anything.
In either country, the World Cup team represents a relatively small sampling of the players who play professional soccer in that country. In addition the World Cup, by being divided along National Lines does even necessarily provide a representative sample of the players in each league. Finally, a good team will be more than the sum of its parts. The American side, with a few notable exceptions, certainly did not have the talent on the pitch that England did, yet the American side advanced as far. The reason is that for all their flaws, Bradley managed to build a team out of them. I am convinced that if the English side had played more like a team, they would have gone a lot farther in this World Cup than they did.
Spain were the best team, but there really wasn’t much competition I’m afraid.
I agree with MarylandBill, the World Cup doesn’t prove which league is better. That would be like saying that Serie A is the best league because Inter Milan won the Champions League last season. Let’s not forget that last season La Liga was less competitive than the SPL, with Valencia finishing 3rd a whopping 26 points behind second placed Real Madrid.
Thanks for posting – the point I’ll eventually get round to making in a separate article (promise!) is that it may be possible to argue that La Liga may be a better league because of the quality of non-Spanish players who play in it (Messi, Higuain, Cristiano Ronaldo for example). I’m happy to agree that La Liga is about as competitive as the SPL – Barcelona and Real Madrid have won 16 of the last 20 editions – but since the turn of the century only three clubs have won the Premiership. Looking at the same point from a different angle, there are players from around the world in the Prem, but we don’t export players abroad – we never really have done. That might be for financial reasons but it might also be because clubs outside England don’t particularly want our top players.