Soccer

The Netherlands lost Sunday’s World Cup final to Spain 1-0, but commentators are wagging their fingers at the country anyway for the team’s rough play. Witness, for example, this dropkick by Dutchman Nigel De Jong, which earned him a yellow card. That was just one of the team’s nine yellow cards, plus a red card—a record for a World Cup final. “No more all-European finals, thank you very much,” writes Richard Williams at the Guardian as he remembers the defining moment of the previous World Cup final, when Frenchman Zinedine Zidane headbutted an Italian player. Raphael Honigstein bemoans the Dutch team's “downright cynical fouling.”