And the winner of the Bradley Cooper look-alike contest is? Diego Furlan.

Let’s play a new game we at a.L.b.b. like to call:


Lex’s so-called expert World Cup analysis:

The final game of a great World Cup sucked.

The refs tried to make it a good game, but the Netherlands had decided to go dirty early. As I have learned from my daughter’s games with a horribly dirty club called Knotts, inferior teams can equalize the game by playing dirty. The more talented teams cannot get combinations going and it brings in much more of the element of luck. Especially if the refs are crooked, as they are at Knotts.

Netherlands came out fouling and the refs tried to shut them down. But then when the Spanish started to see the yellow cards flying, they started flopping and the game got out of the referees control. The 2010 World Cup, sadly, will mostly be remembered for bad officiating. The last game wasn’t bad officiating, but the lack of consistency - sometimes letting them play, sometimes issuing yellows on what were merely flops - added to the ugliness of the already ugly play.

Spain really had no choice but to respond to the dirty play of the Netherlands with flopping. My daughter’s team never flops and when they play Knotts against refs who don’t call anything, the play gets nastier and uglier and three times we had a player get hurt.

In the WC final, the best team, Spain, prevailed, but not by much. This game was so bad it actually deserved to go to penalty kicks. Penalty kicks would have brought an element of class and excitement to generally sloppy and classless play. Floppy and sloppy on the part of the usually pretty and perfect Spain, classless on the part of the Netherlands.

The De Jong character for the Dutch would have gone to jail if his karate kick to the chest happened anyplace but on a soccer field. He should have been kicked out with a red card.

In the end I was far happier to see the Netherlands lose than I was to see Spain win. And I really wanted Spain to win, that’s how classless I thought the Netherlands team was. With an astonishing one billion people watching, the Dutch threw the possibility of a beautifully played World Cup final down the toilet by electing to thug it out.

My favorite player, Uruguay's Diego Furlan, won the Golden Ball as the best player in the World Cup. It was a big day for Furlan, he also won the "The Hangover" star Bradley Cooper look-alike contest.