South Africa - The Good, The Bad And The Dutch

Neville Dalton is a journalist and a Portsmouth fan of more than 40 years.

So the little interlude is over. Now we can get back to the main event - the new domestic football season.

And for most of us it means a shift of focus from recent years, back to a league with which most of us over-12s are more familiar with - the second tier, currently euphemistically labelled The Championship.

After the antics of the World Cup - not least the final - I wonder whether most of us are sad or relieved that we are no longer part of the self-styled greatest league in the world.

To be honest, I'd much rather we were still in the Premier League, although I've made the case for a refreshing change of scenery before in these columns.

But in the real world, I am, as I suspect many of you are, more concerned that we survive as a football team and emerge from this financial hell with our precious club intact and with a decent future.

Where we play our football is rather a secondary concern.

But just before I look ahead to that prospect, in my next column, I want to take a quick peek back at the close-season tourney that filled the gap.

The winners - Congratulations to Spain. I'm glad they beat the Netherlands for obvious reasons, although I'm not so sure they were my favourites in the competition.

I would have preferred the third-place play-off as a final, because it featured probably the two best, most fluent attack-minded teams of the tournament.

Uruguay were pretty consistent and consistently positive, with Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez among the best players in the tournament. Yes, there was that hand-ball against Ghana in the quarter-finals, but if Asamoah Gyan had dispatched the penalty, as he had all previous ones, there would have been no debating point.

For me Germany were the team of the tournament - and featured the best player. Germany's football was just how I like to see it played - fast, positive and attractive.

They have perfected the counter-attacking game much as Manchester United did in the Premier League for much of the Noughties, and indeed not that dissimilarly from the way Pompey played it when the likes of Paul Merson and Svetoslav Todorov were pulling the strings in our promotion year.

Germany had outstanding players all over the pitch - including a very promising young goalkeeper (young, Mr Capello. Take note!) - and an outstanding midfield in which Bastian Schweinsteiger shone brilliantly.

He was my player of the tournament and would certainly be number one on my wish list if pitiful Pompey suddenly won every country's lottery jackpot, with Wesley Sneijder not far behind.

Other "winners" for me were Ghana, who did themselves credit with their play and approach before their quarter-final heartache; Switzerland, who did what no other team managed, and beat the eventual world champions; and Serbia, whose only win in the tournament was against Germany.

Oh, and New Zealand, for remaining unbeaten, if unimpressive.

The republic of South Africa will probably also consider itself a winner, with a largely successfully run competition and some shiny new stadiums to stage the likes of Kaizer Chiefs v Mamelodi Sundowns.

Whether the country as a whole will enjoy lasting benefits remains to be seen.

The losers - The Netherlands, of course - though not so much for losing their third World Cup final; more because they may well have planted the memory seed that lasts longest when fans come to recall the 2010 World Cup finals.

I had seen little of the Dutch during the tournament, so I was far more surprised by their approach to the final match than I could ever have envisaged of a side following in the footsteps of the great footballing Hollands of the 1970s and beyond.

Then there's Howard Webb. I didn't think he had a particularly bad match, although one or two of his decisions failed to stand up to the closest scrutiny, not least his decision to award a goal-kick rather than corner when a Dutch free-kick cannoned off the Spanish wall.

No, he was a loser because he inherited a match he just could not win. It was the World Cup final - the pinnacle of his career. His emotions before the game must have been a mixture of incredible nervousness and determination not to spoil the global showpiece.

But after the Dutch start, he was caught in no man's land, damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

It seemed to me that each of his early yellow cards was correct, and should have had the effect of calming things down.

That it did not was down to the Netherlands' determination to destroy Spain's artistry at any cost - and the Spaniards' understandable frustration, which culminated in some rather easy tumbles under robust Dutch challenges.

Many argue that Nigel de Jong should have been sent off for his high challenge on Xavi Alonso, but watching the incident at normal speed and seeing De Jong's apparent focus only on the ball, I wondered whether Webb was just giving him the benefit of the doubt with regard to intention.

His mistake, in my opinion, was in not calling together the two captains at this stage and warning them that he would not tolerate any more over-aggressive play.

It may have calmed down both teams, and if it did not, at least subsequent perpetrators could have had no complaints at seeing red.

Had that happened, though, I honestly fear there would have been a danger of so many players being sent off that the final would have had to be abandoned.

And what would they have made of Webb then?

Other failures - France, obviously, not least for the players believing they were bigger than the team, not to mention their contempt for their own fans; Italy, for an embarrassingly early exit for a traditionally high-achieving nation; and, inevitably, England.

I've gone over their problems in previous articles, so suffice to say that I genuinely welcome the FA's decision to retain a coach who has a good record, and fervently hope he starts with a blank canvas for the European Championships, despite an apparent dearth of talent coming through.

I believe we have no chance of winning the tournament, but should give young players, such as Adam Johnson, Theo Walcott and Joe Hart the opportunity to establish themselves as the core of our next generation - maybe giving Capello the chance to experiment with some other variations of the formation to which he is so dedicated.

Also on the hit-list - that bloody Jabulani ball. I don't know what it is about it, but it clearly doesn't travel as experienced professional footballers expect it to.

Goalkeepers were deceived by its flight; outfield players found it hard to judge how to strike it, even from free-kicks - and how many forwards failed to get a proper connection from crosses?

No, Fifa, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

How about the Pompey boys?

I wrote before the tournament that I did not expect much of an impact from any players with Pompey connections.

Largely, that was probably correct. Nadir Belhadj and Hassan Yebda performed much as they did for Pompey, Belhadj in particular causing the opposition problems with his attacking thrust.

But their overall impact was not significant in the context of the whole tournament.

Kanu played hardly at all, although by all accounts provided a decent cameo against South Korea.

David James might have escaped the level of censure that most of his England colleagues deserved, but my personal view is that he still did not look very impressive - and certainly failed to engender the sort of confidence among England's defenders that transmits itself to us anxious fans.

He was OK, but not the Jamo that has lit up Fratton Park so frequently in the past few years.

John Utaka was a bench-warmer, and although Aaron Mokoena did a decent job for South Africa, his shortcomings were exposed as the host nation crashed out at the earliest possible opportunity.

Jermain Defoe scored an opportunist goal but did little else in his limited pitch time; Peter Crouch was shunned by Capello in favour of that solid, reliable, quick-footed footballer Emile Heskey, and Glen Johnson's normal confident approach evaporated dramatically after a reasonably impressive opening match against the USA.

The one big winner for me - and hopefully, for Pompey, too, in terms of his transfer fee - was Kevin-Prince Boateng, who I thought played consistently well in a decent Ghana team, belying his lack of experience at international level with some assured performances in an attacking midfield role that caught the eye.

I thought he outshone Sulley Muntari, and while our precarious financial position means Boateng will never fetch anywhere near the same sort of transfer fee that we got for Muntari, I hope he will prove to be Pompey's main source of income as we try to stave off the prospect of liquidation.