FIFA FINES SPAIN & NETHERLANDS FOR WORLD CUP BEHAVIOUR
Baku, August 4 (AZERTAC). World Cup winners Spain and their opponents Netherlands have been fined by Fifa for their players` poor discipline in July`s final.
Football`s governing body fined the Dutch federation £9,080, while the Spanish association must pay £6,053.
English referee Howard Webb booked eight Dutch players and sent off defender John Heitinga in a bad tempered final in South Africa.
Spain, who won the game 1-0 after extra-time, had five players booked.
Dutch midfielder Nigel De Jong was one of the players booked - for a `Kung Fu` kick on Spain midfielder Xabi Alonso which received world-wide condemnation.
De Jong planted his studs into Alonso`s chest, leaving the Real Madrid star needing treatment before he was able to continue playing. The former Liverpool midfielder later called it “one of the worst tackles” he had received.
Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff also launched a scathing attack on Netherlands` display in the final, deriding it as “anti-football”.
“Sadly, they played very dirty,” Cruyff told Spanish newspaper El Periodico.
“This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style... If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost.”
The match set a record for the most cards received in a World Cup final, beating the six yellows shown when Argentina beat West Germany 3-2 in the 1986 final.
The final was also the worst behaved of the 64 matches played in South Africa.
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