craig foster

[ruud]

first of all, congratulations spain. withstood our defense, we knew we couldnt match them technically (we only have about 4 or 5 players of that caliber whilst spain has a whole team) so we had to go on the counter. robben should have also scored...

anyway

craig foster is an absolute disgrace to football. he was clearly biased the entire tournament towards spain and against the dutch.

so what if we didnt play beautiful football? where did that ever get us? last time i checked, we didnt make a final for 32 years

at the end of the game he said only 1 team came out to play, ridiculous. spain were the better team so we had to close down their attack and try to get them on the counter. this is what every team does when they are technically outmatched.

he has a responsibility to remain unbiased and call it down the middle. In the end, the public who do not understand football, will believe every word he says although it is entirely incorrect.

i simply can not stand that man

[BTAC]

Yeah his commentary in the final was pretty poor. Very obvious bias towards Spain.
I was completely neutral going into this match, but as the match went on I found myself wanting Netherlands to win more and more simply to shut Foster up.

[Adel Cobras SAASL]

first of all, congratulations spain. withstood our defense, we knew we couldnt match them technically (we only have about 4 or 5 players of that caliber whilst spain has a whole team) so we had to go on the counter. robben should have also scored...

anyway

craig foster is an absolute disgrace to football. he was clearly biased the entire tournament towards spain and against the dutch.

so what if we didnt play beautiful football? where did that ever get us? last time i checked, we didnt make a final for 32 years

at the end of the game he said only 1 team came out to play, ridiculous. spain were the better team so we had to close down their attack and try to get them on the counter. this is what every team does when they are technically outmatched.

he has a responsibility to remain unbiased and call it down the middle. In the end, the public who do not understand football, will believe every word he says although it is entirely incorrect.

i simply can not stand that man

He was spot on. Dont expect to get any compliments when you bash the other team (8 yellows and a red) because they actually have talented players just to stay competitive.

[Steelinho]

Spain = Mostly Barcelona
Netherlands = Quite a few to be considered Real Madrid

Hence the bias.

Anyway, can't this just be discussed in one of the... three other threads about him?

[Wraith]

He was spot on. Dont expect to get any compliments when you bash the other team (8 yellows and a red) because they actually have talented players just to stay competitive.

[Piola]

I jsut want to say that much of the criticism of the Dutch approach is harsh, particularly from the knobs at SBS (who I usually do rate highly, with the exception of Basheer). How can they bang on about Spain winning being a win for the beautiful game and virtually accusing the Netherlands of tarnishing the final. On paper this is one of the weaker Netherlands sides in quite some time. There are some very average players in this team, particularly at the back. They also had precious little depth. The same media pundits that are bagging their approach were the ones who didn't rate them as highly as usual pre-tournament because of their lack of quality. Today's side have nothing on the team which played in the late 90s.

Yet Van Marwijk got them to the final. They didn't actually lose a game from the first round of qualifying until today. Yes Van Bommel, De Jong et al were butchers but credit to Van Marwijk for getting his side to play to their strengths. Sneijder and Robben aside, they have a lack of world class talent and they were never going to be able to manage fluid traditional Dutch football. Could be argued that style is dead anyway.

commiserations to the Dutch, cause they were minutes away from achieving something special.

[MegaBonus]

regardless, his use (more like over use) of the term 'beautiful football' as in 'joga bonito' was nauseating.

in my opinion, winning 4 knock-out games 1-0 isnt necessarily 'beautiful'. the spanish team used its technical supiriority (maintaining possession) to starve the opposition of goal scoring opportunities (legitimate tactic) thus its great defensive record. its possession style game didnt produce an abundance of goals!!!!

remember, the objective of the game is to score more than your opposition so that you win. the win itself is not the 'beauty' but rather the the way it is achieved....

[Hosovac]

Fozzie is world claaaarsh!

Don't know why the FFA is looking for a coach o/s - the greatest football analysis/expert/coach in waiting is currently wasting his time and expertise at SBS in Sydney.

Monotone Basheer and that whiney biaaatch Fozzie as WC Final commentators...FFS SBS

[Kosta Utd]

He was spot on. Dont expect to get any compliments when you bash the other team (8 yellows and a red) because they actually have talented players just to stay competitive.

the dutch were outclassed and it showed when they resorted to countless harsh tackles on the man.. quite disgraceful, if your that 'technically' challenged you shouldnt of made it to the final, im sure brazil or argentina would of deserved to get there in front of the dutch so stop ya winging

ps; yes craig foster is a fucking ken barbie doll moron

[Red-4-Life]

commentators were clueless and half the time had no idea what they were on about. At half time Kalac went on and on about how Holland were not playing football. Well "Spider", they were and just a different style knowing they were coming up against a very attacking outfit and it worked for them until the 116th min when they were down to 10 men.

Simon Hill should have been on SBS, not the 's that were!

[pino]

I went to the cinema to watch the final...not sure which feed they had, but the commentator was excellent and very amusing.

Comment of the match was..."Sergio Ramos started his career as a striker, while he no longer plays up front he still has no trouble scoring...if you know what I mean.".....GOLD!!!

[ozzie owl]

Worse comment from Foster was when Puyoll cleaned up a Dutch player from behind and he said it was an unfair yellow as it was only his first foul. Hello Craig, check the laws no such rule as no yellow for first foul.

[Chade]

commiserations to the Dutch, cause they were minutes away from achieving something special.

Misleading. They were also a very, very deserved red card (or two) away from an absolute mauling.

[Steelinho]

Worse comment from Foster was when Puyoll cleaned up a Dutch player from behind and he said it was an unfair yellow as it was only his first foul. Hello Craig, check the laws no such rule as no yellow for first foul.

Puyol is a Barca player. How else did you expect Foster to react?

[TheBarkingDog]

Not keen on Foster. Thinks he knows everything, doesn't and is extremely biased.

As a technical commentator, I thought Zelic was good. Dempsey fine. The other commontators on SBS, blah....

[redsfan]

generally i dont mind fossie but he embaressed himself in that call of the final.

[MegaBonus]

its sad that SBS feel that they have an obligation to commentate to the masses who dont understand the game. the game will really take off here if....
1 - we have a high profile and successful national team
2 - the A'League is broadcast on free to air during prime time
3 - we host the WC and other regional championships

not if les and fozzie put on a spain scarfe, grab some pom poms and cheer loudly for 'beautiful football'. as a long term fan of the game, i was shocked and insulted by the one eyed commentry.

heres the article where les defends SBS's actions

A World Cup’s proper ending
13 Jul 2010 | 00:00


Justice is done. There is a god. The right team won. In holding this view I am not alone.

By now it’s clear that the majority of neutral observers, those who are neither Spanish nor Dutch, have applauded the World Cup final’s outcome, as close as it was and as near as it came to going the other way.

The people of the Netherlands deserve sympathy. Having arrived in their third World Cup final in 36 years, fans of De Oranje were desperate to see their country win it at last but experienced only heartbreak, yet another one. It’s a glum reality that must be awful to try and accept.

But this is neither the fault of Spain nor of those who wanted Spain to win.

In my case, and that of my SBS colleagues, we in the promotion of football business have an innate and natural need and responsibility to publicly desire that teams representing the finest ideals of the beautiful game win things.

We do not hide from this. SBS punditry has been this way for 30 years, as it should have been given that dour and ugly football (of which the Dutch were profoundly guilty at Soccer City) will not convert anyone to the world game, at least not in the Australian culture which is already glut with sports that celebrate winners and not how their wins are achieved.

This will explain the sentiment in the intro to this column. It has nothing to do with the nationalities on display or the colour of their shirts, but everything to do with the ideals the teams represented on this day and how those ideals might impact on a receptive Australian audience.

Spain, therefore, was always going to be the popular winner, in this quarter and, thankfully, most others.

La Roja scored few goals on their trek to the title, something that has already been pointed out in many messages that I have received, some from those who claim, obtusely, that because of this a Spanish victory was a bad advertisement for football.

But let’s examine this for a moment.

A bad scoring yield ordinarily implies that few attempts at scoring have been made and that the team guilty of it is by policy defensive, expedient and relies on the counter-attack.

But this is not Spain which, for all its meagre tally of eight goals in seven games, can in the least be accused of being defensively expedient.

To the contrary, it has been the most attacking team in the tournament (save perhaps for Chile), playing high in its attacking third, relentlessly using the ball in an offensive manner with its crisp, creative passing and probing, wonderful player movement and unbridled ambition.

So why the few goals?

Simply because, given the fear they instilled in opponents, few teams dared to open up to them as they would have done to others.

Against Spain it was always about closing down and, as the Dutch did in the final, about physical intimidation, extracting free kicks and the reliance on set pieces as a counter-measure to Spain’s groove and rhythm.

Netherlands indeed played the final through the prism of fear and capitulation, a sad thing given that country’s glorious reputation for imposing the game on its opponents.

This was a massive disappointment about this Dutch team, hailing from the very football culture which gave Spain, and many of Spain’s club teams, the inspiration for methods that would ultimately win it the World Cup, a thing that continues to elude the Dutch.

While Spanish culture took the Dutch philosophy to a higher level over the past couple of decades, the Dutch themselves abandoned its spirit and, under Bert van Marwijk, turned to something that Johan Cruyff has disowned in disgust for being un-Dutch.

The tragic thing is that this took place in a World Cup where countries have a responsibility to display their inherent, cultural football ideologies, above and beyond the need to win. Netherlands came having abandoned theirs before a ball was kicked.

It did this out of a desperate need to win. Giovanni Von Bronckhorst said at a press conference: ‘I’d rather win ugly than lose playing beautifully.’ So what now? The Dutch both played ugly and lost.

Netherlands now finds itself in a terrible place. Having abandoned its own identity, for which it was universally admired, it now doesn’t have one.

It, like Brazil, will now have to take stock and find a route forward that both identifies it and is capable of bringing it the just results it so direly wants.

In Brazil, the post-Dunga hangover is already a thing of the past and you can expect the Brazilians to swiftly return to an emphasis on their samba traditions. Their flirtation with abandoning what made them special, and often winners, ended in failure.

For all that I found the World Cup final intriguing, if at times distasteful, for it was a contest between ideologies and dogmas, as many football matches are. World Cups act as stages for these quarrels all the time, to our fascination, and this World Cup was no different.

Many have taken issue with my earlier contention that this was a fine and memorable World Cup, listing a number of imperfections which plagued it, from the vuvuzelas to the cold temperatures.

But World Cups are not to be measured by their perfections, by their numbers, such as goals or spectators, or even by the purity of the football.

World Cups are about drama, conflicts, ironies and paradoxes, about smiles, tears, controversies, arguments, justices and injustices and the full cacophony of human emotions, from fear and frustration to laughter and anger.

My perennial fear before each World Cup is that it will be boring.

This World Cup may have been many things but, even for the dreaded monotone of the plastic trumpets, boring it was not.

[Steve#4]

Faaaarkkkk I am sick of hearing grown men refer to it as "the beautiful game".....Come and play amatuers or feds on the weekend and see how "beautiful" it is.....

the game is ultra technical, requires speed and strength and timing is paramount to suceed........Describing it as beautiful is for the delusiuonal or over dramatic

[Iamthelaw]

Worse comment from Foster was when Puyoll cleaned up a Dutch player from behind and he said it was an unfair yellow as it was only his first foul. Hello Craig, check the laws no such rule as no yellow for first foul.

Is that kind of like backyard cricket when you cant get out first ball?

[David Puddy]

Foz sucks major penis, simple as that.
Bring Bozza to SBS

[albertdeny]

I just want to say that many Dutch criticism of the approach is difficult, especially SBS knobs. How to hit Spain victory is a victory for the beautiful game and the practice of blaming the Netherlands brought the final. It should have seen 12 months ago, what, when we walked our way to the Cup qualification, or when we beat Ireland 3-0, or when it was granted seven games or something. Foster is not liked because he found a job and has now entered this opportunity to invite him fired.

[ronaldo07]

get over it , bron !!

[ruud]

fuck off sunhat

[Nice One Cyril]

I have to say that, although I think that Foster is a bit of a plank, I more or less agree with everything that Les Murray says, with a couple of exceptions.

I'm not critical of the Dutch for the way they played, the coach did what he thought would win them the game because that's his job, but I am glad that it was ultimately unsuccessful. It's up to the officials to keep things under control without fear or favour.

As for the 'beautiful game', I think people like Murray only see the beauty in the rippling of the net or an exquisite pass from a midfielder and, in themselves, they are great things, but to me, that's just the populist view and is missing so much of what makes football, football. Who can say that Moore's tackle on Jairzinho wasn't a thing of beauty, that great saves, desperate blocks and thumping headers mean nothing?

Over the years, I've watched full backs get roasted by the winger in the first 5 minutes, then slowly but surely they've worked out what the winger will do, got him under control and, by half time he's in their pocket. Start of the second half and the winger's been moved to the other wing or subbed. How's that not beautiful, thinking football?

[Steelinho]

Exactly. A lot of what those "pundits" may consider ugly is part of the beauty of the game. I love seeing superb, inch-perfect tackles and perfect positioning that stifles another team's movement so much that they can do absolutely nothing.

[pino]

Whether or not you agree with Foster...surely you cant say that watching a team whose movement, passing and technique are all excellent is bad.

Who would I rather watch Spain or Slovakia or for an EPL perspective Arsenal or Blackburn?? Simple answer...for a simple reason Spain and Arsenal both play fast moving, attractive football with an emphasis on technique and movement. I dont see the problem with that at all.

While I also appreciate how defensive tactics are utilised to stifle a team, surely attacking football that utilises many players and the length and width of the park is the most attractive football to be viewed.

[Nice One Cyril]

Whether or not you agree with Foster...surely you cant say that watching a team whose movement, passing and technique are all excellent is bad.

Who would I rather watch Spain or Slovakia or for an EPL perspective Arsenal or Blackburn?? Simple answer...for a simple reason Spain and Arsenal both play fast moving, attractive football with an emphasis on technique and movement. I dont see the problem with that at all.

While I also appreciate how defensive tactics are utilised to stifle a team, surely attacking football that utilises many players and the length and width of the park is the most attractive football to be viewed.

I don't think anyone said that watching Spain is bad (although I might take issue with watching the scumbag Goons ), more that he's giving a very simplified view of the game that misses a large part of what football is all about. Many commentators would do well to remember that virtually every great team has been built on the rock of a great defence.

[Steelinho]

... Spain and Arsenal both play fast moving, attractive football with an emphasis on technique and movement.

I know it's not your point, but Spain seem to me more like a slow-moving build up team. It's the same idea with Barcelona; and Spain succeeded with the same tactic (with exception to a few key tweaks from Del Bosque, i.e. deeper wingers) because the majority of the squad are used to it, considering they also play for Barcelona.

[Judge Judy]

first of all, congratulations spain. withstood our defense, we knew we couldnt match them technically (we only have about 4 or 5 players of that caliber whilst spain has a whole team) so we had to go on the counter. robben should have also scored...

anyway

craig foster is an absolute disgrace to football. he was clearly biased the entire tournament towards spain and against the dutch.

so what if we didnt play beautiful football? where did that ever get us? last time i checked, we didnt make a final for 32 years

at the end of the game he said only 1 team came out to play, ridiculous. spain were the better team so we had to close down their attack and try to get them on the counter. this is what every team does when they are technically outmatched.

he has a responsibility to remain unbiased and call it down the middle. In the end, the public who do not understand football, will believe every word he says although it is entirely incorrect.

i simply can not stand that man

robben's fault

[ronaldo07]

shiraz off sunhat

ok .. but only when u get over it .. promise u will ???