The winner of this World championship is the Dutch football (Yahoo)

The reader should not be confused. We do not refer to the Dutch team that arrived to the final with their own merits staying undefeated with a great eliminatory and very good individual performance. We do refer to the Dutch line of playing football because the “oranges” as “ the red” of Spain, the other finalist, continue this line of game that joins the symbolically in a final with two styles almost identical.

Is not the Spanish team a mirror of the Barcelona but without Lionel Messi and a few added, as the Madridists Iker Casillas, Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos, the lateral Capdevila, of Villarreal, and a pair of players of the Premier League? This Spanish team has in its files eight players of Barcelona of Josep Guardiola (that continues the final instances of the World Championship from Johannesburg), and that from small boys, in many cases (Messi and Cesc included), are training together in La Masía, where no other line is followed but the one from almost four decades ago brought by Rinus Michels, when the Dutch took charge of the team and brought nothing less but Johan Cruyff to wear the red/blue colours.

The truth is that influence of the Dutch of the “Mechanic Orange” of the World Championship in Federal Germany 1974 who lost in the final vs the locals but for many remained in the best place of the memory, took the same in the Barcelona that passed to be almost a branch of the Dutch football generating a current of sympathy with the orange football.

The mementos of that red/blue team where also participated another Dutch crack as John Neeskens, as well as the Peruvian “Cholo” Sotil, they extended when Cruyff, that had such a spectacular influence as player, in the seventies, afterwards he was the most successful coach and now is honorary president of he entity and adviser in the whole last time of notable successes including two Champions League between 2006 up to now.

Nobody forgets, however, in the Barcelona, that for years their maximum achievement had been that of the first Champions League won in Wembley in 1992, with a young Cruyff seated on the bench of substitutes and with a blond deputy also Dutch, Ronald Koeman, as performer of that glorious free shot vs the Italian Sampdoria , that the Catalonian television repeated without stopping for a decade until the Second Cup that of Paris, at last let that memento go.

But things did not stop there and the Barcelona continued to be nourished by Dutch, specially end of the years nineties when the conduction of Josep Lluis Nuñez and Joan Gaspart –confronted with Cruyff- contracted as coach another Dutch, Louis Van Gaal, Champion of Europe and Intercontinental with the Ajax, namely, following the same line though already in this case, Barcelona was full of Dutches as Marc Overmars, Bogarde, Reiziger, Frank De Boer, Phillipe Cocu, even the Finish Jerri Litmanen (who also integrated that successful Ajax) and specially a sensational striker as Patrick Kluivert.

It was a real Dutch branch in the Barcelona that won leagues though could not project in Europe and in every celebration in the traditional Plaza Saint Jaume, it cost for the “orange” players to say “Visca Cataluyna” (Cheer Cataluña).

When Van Gaal and the conduction left and assumed the present Joan Laporta, he quickly looked for a Dutch to take charge of the team. With Cruyff out due to health problems (tobacco does not allow him jobs of pressure), they tried with Koeman, and in front of his rejection, they sought for Frank Rikjaard who had not went so good with the team of his country but however, he could generate a great team when he arrived to the Barcelona and he brought to integrate the group Van Bommel and Giovanni Van Bronckhorst, two of the players who will confront Spain in the great final of Sunday in the stadium Soccer City.

It means that the Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, in a certain form have Dutch gens and will confront many ex companions, meanwhile that on the bench of orange substitutes together with the coach Bert Van Marjwick, there will accompany him his collaborators Phillipe Cocu and Frank De Boer, two ex players identified with the Barcelona.

In what does consist this Dutch line that was so loved by the Catalonians but that also pursuit by the oranges? In a simple and clear concept it is necessary to get the ball and keep it as long as possible. The possession of the ball is the clue because with this it is avoided that the rival gets it thus any attack is avoided and at the same time, it is possible to dispose of time to think and accommodate the time of the game.

The other fundamental point of this idea is that in the football what runs is the ball, not the player. In his fabulous book “My football players and myself”, Cruyff, perhaps the major symbol of the geniality in the Dutch football, sustains that this sport “is for lazy people because the necessary speed is the trot as Pelé”.

Some exaggerated, as a contemporaneous of Cruyff, the genial creative Argentinean midfielder of the seventies and eighties, Ricardo Bochini, always played with Independiente, asked eve of the match vs Ajax for the Intercontinental Cup about the great Dutch player, he simply returned the hit : “he runs much but plays well”

Sunday night, in the Soccer City, there will be seen faces of two similar styles, those of the Catalonized Spain and that traditional Holland. But the orange line has already won, be it any the winner.