A Spanish team that will be remembered as legend:

So what happens when you field 7 Barcelona wizards and marry them to the tough, elegant men of Madrid? Noble, total football emerges, of the kind that Spain stubbornly believed in during World Cup 2010’s finale, against a Dutch side that was on the field to slash and burn.

Let’s face it. This was a hard fought but shockingly anticlimactic match. Both teams felt the burden of history in the making hanging on their shoulders. Sneijder was all but anonymous, Robben has never missed more glaring chances in a single game and De Jong mistook the world’s biggest sporting match for tae-kwon-do. Puyol and company were not saints either. Barcelona’s otherwise fully deserving captain was lucky to get away with some of his late tackles. Casillas saved his team from disaster many times over, and will be hailed as a hero for Spain as much as David Villa and Iniesta. Even so, through gritted teeth, both teams gave their best. Renouncing their reputation as the kings of fair-play, The Dutch did what they had to do to stop Spain’s mesmerizing construction game. Yet the Spanish pressed on. Carried by new found steel and ambition, they believed until the end that somewhere at the end of a Cesc Fabregas ball, Andres Iniesta would appear and send Spain up there with the greats. Sure enough, tackle him all you will, but the little man from Barcelona hardly ever disappoints.

There’s a degree of bittersweet irony to Netherlands losing against the very style of play that their beloved Johan Cruyff brought to Barcelona in the ‘70s. This should be a lesson learned for Sneijder’s silver generation however. Had the Dutch stuck to the football they showed in the games leading to the final, particularly in the quarter against Brazil, they would have had a better chance. It’s a sad record Netherlands has set losing 3 world cup finals. But the Dutch must look forward, build on this generation, and just like Germany, come back in 2014 sporting a truly distinctive personality. They have the pieces for it. Many back in Holland will naturally wonder what went wrong this time.

It just happened that Spain was better on Sunday. They were luckier, and had a date with destiny. The octopus has spoken, if you will.

Seeing this match in a 3 story Galician community center in Queens reinforced something I had felt long before the World Cup even started. This success was long, long overdue, and came to counter not only Spain’s anonymity on the world football stage, but a long history of civil strife. Above all, the result shows that Spain has finally learned to move past its crippling separatism. When it comes to football, at least. Mastermind Vicente del Bosque and his boys will not only be remembered for playing legendary football. They will hopefully be remembered for giving an opportunity to the folks back home to put their differences aside, and come together as one nation. Such is the power of football.