Perfect game plan, imperfect result
I have precious little free time this week as I am getting married on Saturday. Whenever I am not at work I am working on the last critical items for the wedding. I do feel compelled, however, to comment on what I think is undeserved criticism of the Dutch team's performance in the final.
Let's get one thing straight. Any team in the final has one purpose: to win the match within the confines of the rules of the sport. When a team encounters a finesse/rhythm/passing squad like Spain, they have two options for victory. They can either try to match that team's strategy (if they feel they have the talent to do so), or they do their best to disrupt the other team's strategy and pounce on the mistakes. From the outset of Sunday's match, it was clear the Dutch were pursuing the latter strategy.
To make the latter strategy succeed a team must be relentless and ruthless in their physicality. I am not talking about Ryan Sawcross or Nigel de Jong ruthlessness, but I am talking about fair challenges that push the limits of yellow card territory. You have to make every player think they are about to be hit as soon as they touch the ball. Doing so not only makes them less likely to complete an attacking pass, but it makes it far more likely they'll make a bad pass that sets up a counterattack. I am an Arsenal supporter - this type of tactic is the MO of every lower level squad our team faces in the EPL. I am the most likely to gripe about its application, but as long as the challenges are fair it's part of the game. You can't dictate how the opposition chooses to engage you.
And you know what? The Netherlands' strategy worked perfectly. See Figures 1 and 2 below, which plot each semi-finalists' Footballer-Rating absolute and differential score in each World Cup match they played.
Figure 1: Footballer-Rating score differential by match (dashed line represent three match moving average)
Figure 2: Footballer-Rating score by match (dashed lines represent three match moving average)
Looking at Figures 1 and 2, one clearly sees that Spain had their worst match of the tournament in the final. This is especially true when one looks at the running average, where the only time the Spanish average takes a dive is after they play the Dutch. Passing efficiency for a number of Spanish players was off by 10% or more compared to their match against Germany, and far fewer Spanish players had an efficiency rating of 80% or higher against the Netherlands. The Dutch disrupted the Spanish team's rhythm, and when Spain is winning all their knockout round matches 1-0 such disruption makes a win for the opposition possible.
FIFA, ESPN, and commentators around the world can gripe all they want about the Dutch play in this match. They can call it ugly. They can call it dirty. They can claim it will dull the acceptance of soccer in the US. They can make all the claims they want. What they can't claim is that it was ineffective because the numbers don't support that claim. Quite simply, the Dutch were the most effective at disrupting the Spanish style of play that has shredded the world over the last two to three years. If not for a missed Dutch opportunity or two, we never would have gone to extra time and would instead be talking about how brilliant of a game plan was executed by the Dutch.
The goal of any soccer game is to win within the bounds of the rules. If it produces a beautiful match in the process, that's great. Let's not let our obsession for "the beautiful game" lead us to penalize teams who come up with the best strategy to use against their opponent that doesn't fit within our narrow view of the game. Let us celebrate diversity of tactics, a near perfect game plan to take down a soccer juggernaut, and that juggernaut's impressive patience to score a late goal after nearly two hours of such physicality.
This is how I will choose to remember this World Cup and its final match. How about you?
Update: Only a few hours before I made this post, Soccer Quantified made a similar post that looked at each team's foul count during the tournament and their relative success at winning matches, their total points during group play, and their goals scored. It turns out the Dutch ranked in the top third for fouls/match (although that average was helped out by the 28 fouls in the final), and clearly outperformed all other teams in the metrics vs. their fouls per match. Soccer Quantified found distinct negative correlations for each metric with regards to the number of fouls committed. This implies, clearly, that fouling is no way to win an average match. Deploying the strategy, at the right time, can win a single match. That's the essence of my post above, and I stand by it given the several missed opportunities by the Dutch that would have sewn up their first World Cup in regular time.
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