world cup

Here are two "objective" reasons why I think the Netherlands (Holland) will win today's World Cup final:

• They have scored more goals than Spain in the 2010 World Cup. They have scored 12 goals and let in 5 and are unbeaten so far. Spain's track record in goals is 7-2 with one loss against Switzerland.  
• They have demonstrated their ability to fight back when the chips are down. In the game against Brazil, they fought back after being down 1:0 at half time to win 2:1. Spain failed to deliver after being 1:0 down against Switzerland and lost.

Would you rather bet on the fire power of Robben, Snijder, Kuyt and van Persie scoring goals for the Dutch or David Villa for Spain? 

The Dutch football oracle Johan Cruijff on the other hand prefers Spain's style of football and thinks they are favourites but has avoided making any predictions, which makes sense because he is Dutch but lives in Spain.  Read more

If you are a fan of psychic predictions or "statistical" (in the sense of "past performance is a good indicator for the future") reasoning or just plain good marketing and entertainment value, here is a video of the best predictors of the game this year:

• Paul the octopus in Oberhausen, Germany has predicted all the German games correctly 
• Mani the parrot from Singapore has predicted all the games since the Quarter-Finals correctly

But on their prediction for the World Cup final they disagree: 

Congratulation go out to the owners of Paul and Mani for a great marketing job. They are certainly winners already for figuring out a great way to draw attention to themselves.

Who do you believe - Paul or Mani?

My interest in this World Cup started to grow after Switzerland upset Spain. The Swiss TV moderators didn't dare utter the thought that Switzerland might win, but the team showed them.

But Switzerland seemed to inspire other teams as well. Serbia upset Germany, one of the favourites and Mexico upset France.

So at the moment the only team to have played convincingly so far has been Argentina. When a journalist asked coach Maradona if the players were doing so well because of his affectionate hugs after the game, he almost had a cow :-)

Other favourites like England are struggling, none of the African teams have lived up to their promise, Brazil and Holland have won their games but not impressed, nor has Italy.

So I am looking forward to the knock-out phase when the teams have to play to win. In the meantime don't forget to watch Switzerland - I am counting on many more upsets there. Remember Greece and the European Championship 2004?