This week at StarTribune.com, I’ve got my one piece of State Fair-related advice. Head over to RandBall to see some sports links, too, including the Twins, a wonderful Gopher Football blog I’ve just found, a great soccer story – and a cricket link, too.

Over at SB Nation Minnesota this week, my column was about all of the distractions that the Vikings faced this summer – and how, should they overcome those issues, the Purple can prove just how pointless off-season news really is.

This week, we’re covering baseball, hockey, and open-wheel auto racing. As I say in this week’s effort: you’re just lucky I didn’t cover all of the goings-on in cricket. (Maybe next week.)

A few weeks ago, Major League Soccer enjoyed a flurry of coverage in advance of its All-Star Game, which this year pitted the league All-Stars against Manchester United. MLS commissioner Don Garber was interviewed far and wide about league-related topics, but one of the most commonly discussed was expansion. Currently a 16-team outfit, the league will expand to Portland and Vancouver next year, and to Montreal in 2012 – but after that, then who?

Garber gave his thoughts on the subject to Grant Wahl, of Sports Illustrated:

If we could write the book, the next chapter would be a second team in New York… I hope our 20th team is in New York City. We’ve got a lot of work to do to achieve that. Beyond New York, Atlanta is still very engaged and started a committee to support the sport at a wide variety of levels. San Diego has just entered the mix. The man who bought the Silverdome in Detroit has been in discussions with us. I get probably 10 to 20 e-mails a day from fans in Miami trying to have us pay attention to their interest.

There is plenty of interest across the country for big-league soccer, and as the league zooms to 20 teams and beyond, you do have to wonder: could Minnesota be a destination for the league in the near future?

“Of course, any soccer fan would want to have the highest level of soccer here,” says Brian Quarstad, who runs the wonderful Inside Minnesota Soccer.  Quarstad may be one of the two men who know the most about soccer in Minnesota; Bruce McGuire, the other, publishes the great (and jaw-droppingly comprehensive) Du Nord Futbol, and echoes those sentiments. “As a fan I want the best,” he said. “So I would be very, very happy to have MLS in this city. The future seems so huge to me these days.”

On the one hand, Minnesota does have a history of supporting professional soccer. Minnesota Kicks games were famously well-attended in the NASL era in the 1970s, although depending on who you listen to, this was mostly due to the availability of free tickets and a certain lax attitude regarding the normal rules and mores of tailgating and fandom at Met Stadium. In the 1990s, the Minnesota Thunder – in the second tier of American soccer – were very successful, and although they fell toward the bottom of the league in the 2000s, they survived all the way up until 2009, becoming one of the longest-running teams in stateside soccer along the way.

On the other hand, the team that replaced the Thunder, the NSC Minnesota Stars, are having a rough go of it, in their first year. The Star Tribune recently ran an article about the Stars’ attendance difficulties, titled “Pro Soccer: A game in search of fans.”

Mlive.com did a story about the possible expansion of the league to Detroit; the Greek-born new owner of the Silverdome has an intriguing but slightly goofy plan to add two arenas in the lower deck of the stadium, then build a soccer field atop the arenas and transform the upper deck into a roof-less soccer stadium. In the article, the site lays out MLS’s four criteria for an expansion team:

• Committed long-term ownership with deep pockets.
• Approved plan to build a soccer-specific stadium where the team would control revenue streams such as parking and concessions.
• A healthy media market
• A strong soccer fanbase

The first two seem like the highest obstacles to climb for Minnesota, but there may be some hope for local soccer fans. Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf might be the area’s best chance; last winter, the Star Tribune reported that part of Wilf’s plan for a new Vikings stadium would involve getting an MLS team to play in the stadium as well. While this may have simply been stadium-related posturing – Wilf said the same when the team was trying to get a stadium in Blaine – he may be the only person with the ability to pull off bringing an MLS team to town, and he has supposedly had interactions with commissioner Garber about the idea. And while playing in the lower bowl of an NFL stadium doesn’t fit the MLS mold of soccer-specific facilities, that formula has been successful in Seattle, where the Sounders lead the league in attendance, drawing 36,000 fans a game to Qwest Field, the home of the Seahawks.

Quarstad says that, while the Stars may be struggling at the gate now and the Thunder may just have folded, this isn’t necessarily the end of the idea that soccer can succeed here. He said, “Have we ever had a high-profile pro soccer team, that’s playing fairly successfully, in a decent urban stadium, and that’s been marketed well? I don’t think you can say that has ever happened.”

McGuire backs up that point, noting that other MLS teams have had a similar history. “Toronto had wretched attendance when they were in the same league as the Thunder,” he said. “And Seattle was not a blockbuster in that league either – not remotely at the attendance levels of Montreal or Portland. More like Thunder numbers. And those two cities have blown the roof off MLS. It’s not about how those expansion targets draw these days – with serious owners who really know how to market a pro sports team they can draw huge numbers.”

Both also have a pretty good idea of one ingredient that needs to be part of the mix here, in order for an MLS team to survive – a place to play downtown. “Seattle and Toronto both made the smart move of building their stadiums in the downtown area,” said McGuire. “Just look at the buzz the Twins have gotten off the location of a new home. It matters.”

Quarstad goes even further. “The whole concept of making these teams more urban is where it’s at,” he said. “Looking at who the target market is, it’s the 21- to 45-year-old males. They will go to the beer garden, will buy food, will buy apparel, will go support the team. MLS has found out it’s not the moms and the pops that support a team. And where are you going to find this target market? Uptown. The U of M. Northeast Minneapolis. If you put a team in an urban facility that has drinking and entertainment and is accessible by mass transit and bike – that’s never been tried here in the correct way.”

This isn’t to say, of course, that there are no problems. The local media’s coverage, or lack thereof, may well be an issue. Said McGuire, “One thing that we do not have that other expansion cities have is that their local newspapers were covering soccer in a very real way long before MLS was brought to town. The local press had a lot to do with the teams getting off to a great start, because they had really experienced soccer writers in place for a long time. Our newspapers and sports radio basically ignore the sport, and their few stories are generally anti-soccer.”

Both papers in town use out-of-season high school reporters to cover the Stars, on the rare occasion they do cover the team. While the Star Tribune has several knowledgeable soccer fans on staff – including Page 2 correspondent Michael Rand, who columnist Patrick Reusse once accused on television of being “kind of a soccer kisser-upper” – it’s not a priority for the paper.

“I think the attitude towards soccer [at the paper] has certainly changed,” said Rand. “There’s a lot more people that pay attention than five or ten years ago. It’s not like there’s a bad climate for soccer journalism. I think soccer as a relevant thing to cover, the major soccer stories like the World Cup, I think that’s gotten way more mainstream acceptance in our newsroom.”

Rand admits that the paper doesn’t do much for NSC Stars coverage – but for pragmatic reasons. “I covered the Thunder fairly regularly for quite a few years, starting back in 1998 when they went to the A-League championship and then for several years thereafter. That changed, and I think the reasons were two-fold. Staffing issues at the paper forced us to rethink everything we cover; we only had so many people to devote to that.

“And I really think when they moved to Griffin Stadium [also known as the football field at St. Paul Central High School – ed.], they lost a little of their core audience and became less relevant. It became a little more minor league, and it was kind of apparent to us, at least, that they weren’t quite as serious. Our coverage kind of reflected that. Their attendance was no longer growing, and they were no longer sustaining the audience that required staffing a vast majority of the games.

“It’s the chicken and the egg thing – is there less interest because we cover them less, or do we cover them less because there’s less interest? But I would hardly gauge what the Star Tribune thinks of soccer based on how we cover the Stars. We’re a different market than a lot of minor league soccer teams would be. You’d get more coverage in a smaller market, but we’re a pro sports market.”

Minnesota does have one of the most crowded sports scenes in the country. MLS begins in late March and ends in late November; the team would go up against all four major pro teams and all three major Gopher sports during that period, not to mention the host of minor teams – the Swarm in lacrosse, the Saints in baseball, the Lynx in basketball, and so on. “Most major cities don’t have that,” says Quarstad.

That said, Rand is certain that things would be different, media-wise, with an MLS team. “You would see a much different level of coverage. There’s no doubt in my mind there’d be a full-time guy. Maybe not a year-round guy, but I could definitely see it being someone covering that team, and off-season news, and every single home match in the least. Away matches too – I don’t know about travel, that’s a tricky thing. But as for a full-time guy who’s writing features and such, I have no doubt in my mind.”

As for a possible future as a Minnesota MLS beat writer, Rand just laughed. “I don’t know, that’d be a fun team to cover,” he said. “The MLS is a good league and a good enterprise, and they’ve made some strides; having that in the market would be very fun.”

So, can a team survive? Quarstad is optimistic. “By the time we would get a team, in 2018 or whatever, MLS will have a better idea of how to set up a team and make them successful here,” he said. “I hate to gamble, and I hate to be bold, but I’d give it better than a 50-50 chance.”

There’s no MLS team in Minnesota’s near future. The state still needs a new Vikings stadium and a serious owner like Zygi Wilf to make it even plausible, and so it may be five or ten more years before it can even be seriously considered. That said if MLS chooses to continue expanding, the basics are in place here, and you can bet that Minnesota will be in contention for a team.

It’s Saturday, and time for another edition of the weekend links. New Timberwolf Anthony Tolliver makes an appearance, along with a few exceptional Twins links, and a short essay wondering why anybody would go to a golf tournament.

Also this week, I wrote some extended remarks for David Kahn at Canis Hoopus. (Before you click, be aware that this was an attempt at humor, and most of the commenters at the site hated hated hated it. Apparently only I find David Kahn funny as a grizzled old newspaperman.)

The weekend links were up a little late, but better late than never, we always say. Topics this week: why football training camp coverage annoys me, plus some baseball (like always).

Here’s a few things I’ve written over the past week or so:

Replacing Kevin Slowey – As part of Trade Deadline Week at Twinkie Town, I examined whether replacing Kevin Slowey in the Twins rotation was really a good idea.

Mauer’s bunt may be the wrong kind of turning point – Following Joe Mauer’s ill-advised late-inning bunt attempt last Tuesday, I wrote at SBN Minnesota that it might represent a turning point for the Twins – of the bad kind.

Weekend Links – This week at RandBall: Twins payroll, hockey, rally driving, and pudgy dudes running to third base. It’s all there!

I spent most of last month writing about the World Cup, which meant that the other thing I usually post here – links to other efforts elsewhere – got lost in the shuffle. And so I have two things to mention today:

First, my weekly effort at SB Nation Minnesota is up – in which I give a few suggestions to improve fan interest in the MLB All-Star Game. I think a couple of them are good ones, so I hope you’ll take a minute to click through, read, and then tell me what you think.

Also, if you’re reading this on the blog, rather than via an RSS reader – look to the right side of the page. There’s a little section titled “Jon at SB Nation,” which will pull links to everything I write at Twinkie Town, Canis Hoopus, and SB Nation Minnesota. I’ll still post links to the major stuff, but everything from those three sites will show up there.

(You can also access my SB Nation page directly here, but I suspect this link will only be of interest to my immediate family. Hi, folks!)

Thanks to a woeful lack of time, I’d only done a single running diary for the 2010 World Cup – the Germany-Australia group match. High time, I thought, that I corrected this. Spain! Netherlands! La Roja vs. the Oranje! It’s live from Johannesburg, via ESPN, Martin Tyler, and Efan Ekoku.

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Pregame Tyler asks Ekoku to speak for the entirety of Africa about this World Cup. Here’s the part where we remind you that Ekoku is from Manchester, and spent his entire career in England (though he did play for the Nigerian national team.)</p>

In the studio, Ruud Gullit predicts a 2-1 win for Holland. Steve McManaman predicts a 3-0 Spanish win, then stares Gullit (a former Dutch star) down. Awk-ward!

FIFA’s propaganda campaign continues, as they pat themselves on the back for putting the World Cup in Africa. Apparently, soccer will save the continent, according to this commercial, which has public-access production values.

According to FIFA, the real winner of the 2010 World Cup is… South Africa! I suppose if we’re judging it in terms of “Number of useless stadiums built for single event,” then I agree, though it’s a tight race between South Africa and China.

National anthems! Spain’s sounds like it’s being broadcast from an iPod through a megaphone, and heavily features the glockenspiel.

Ekoku thinks that the Dutch will be affected by their Final losses in 1974 and 1978. This seems unlikely, given that all but three Dutch players weren’t alive in 1978. This might be a good time to start the match.

0 Tyler says that for Netherlands, “This might not be ‘Total Football,’ but they hope it’s ‘title football.’” Martin Tyler, as always, should fire his writers.

2 David Villa is offside for Spain. Get used to that.

4 Great save from Maarten Stekelenburg, the Dutch goalkeeper! Sergio Ramos got loose from a set piece, Stekelenburg had to punch away low and to his right. Almost 1-0 early, but the keeper has the Orange still in the game.

7 Either Holland are waiting to counter-attack… or they plan to park the bus in front of the goal for ninety minutes. Everyone in the world is hoping for the former.

10 Apparently Holland has been staying in the same hotel as the ESPN folks, as the team failed to extend their reservations through the final. I’d say “so much for journalistic distance,” but, well…

11 Dutch defender John Heitinga nearly scores an own goal. In fact, I can’t see how he avoided it, as he somehow stabbed the ball almost vertically from two yards away, despite just sticking a foot out. Either it was the most impressive clearance ever, or the luckiest.

14 Mark Van Bommel, the Netherlands midfielder, is apparently well known for somehow avoiding yellow cards. He doesn’t look innocent; I don’t know what he has going for him. Maybe he’s a witch.

15 Robin Van Persie goes into the book for his second horrible challenge. He really could have been carded in the first 45 seconds for a bad tackle – two was apparently enough for English referee Howard Webb.

16 Now Carles Puyol goes in the book for fouling Arjen Robben. I muse on whether Puyol deserves a medal, rather than a card.

18 “While you were looking at that replay, David Villa was caught offside.” Less than surprising commentary from Martin Tyler. The game is starting to open up, by which I mean that sometimes Holland now have the ball.

22 Van Bommel can’t escape that yellow card. Horrible, horrible tackle. Nearly a leg-breaker. The Netherlands are apparently trying to steamroll the Spanish, and I mean that just about literally.

23 Now Ramos goes into the book for Spain. Howard Webb’s carding arm is getting a workout.

28 What. The. Hell! Nigel de Jong fouls Spain’s Xavi Alonso with a kung fu kick to the chest. I have described that correctly. He was about four yards from getting the ball, there. Somehow this only earns a yellow card, though I have no idea how. It was worth a red, plus another yellow, plus a free kick in the butt from two selected Spanish players.

The BBC’s text commentary on that tackle: “Crikey.”

31 Even odds right now: First goal, or first Dutch player sent off?

34 Holland attempts to kick the ball to Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas following a restart. The ball bounces gaily over Casillas’ head, off his gloves, and out for a corner. van Persie has to run seventy yards to go attempt to kick the ball to Casillas again. Not the finest moment ever in a World Cup Final.

39 Things are sloooowing down. You get the sense most of the players are waiting for halftime.

42 Halftime naps all over the world begin early, thanks to the excitement of this game. The only entertainment involves Howard Webb halting the game to yell at various players.

HALFTIME: NETHERLANDS 0-0 SPAIN

45 It’s usually not a good sign, in terms of entertainment value, when the biggest story of a half involves one player karate-kicking another in the chest.

51 Not much exciting happening in the second half, though Joan Capdevila swings and misses following a Spain corner. It’s always fun to watch a world-class player do exactly as well as I would do in the same situation.

52 Robben does the same thing every time: Get the ball, cut inside on his left foot, shoot for the near post. It’s one of his two talents; the other is being a bald, diving idiot.

54 So far this half, both teams have evenly split their time between 1) soccer and 2) admonishing the referee. To say I am annoyed by this would be an understatement.

55 Now Giovanni van Bronckhorst goes in the book for Holland. I think Tyler just said that we’ve already set a record for the number of yellow cards in a World Cup Final. Xavi wastes the resulting free kick.

56 Villa rolls around on the ground clutching his foot. I rage at Spain for being the typical continental, diving, cheating, attempting-to-get-other-team-carded kind of team. Howard Webb, not helping things, cautions Heitinga based solely on Villa’s performance in his new one-man show, I am David Villa, look at how much my foot hurts, the pain is excruciating! That’s some bad refereeing, right there.

58 Right now, Webb has done more to influence this match than any player or coach. Possible man of the match honors coming his way.

60 Jesus Navas is on for Spain. If this were in the States, someone would have a sign that said “CASILLAS SAVES, JESUS SCORES” or something like that. Sadly, none is forthcoming on this broadcast.

61 Tyler says that, according to ESPN analyst Roberto Martinez, Puyol grows his hair long because he is embarrassed of the size of his ears. I’m sure Puyol will be thrilled with the both of them.

62 BREAKAWAY FOR ROBBEN! SAVE CASILLAS! Robben was all alone away on goal, but his shot hit Casillas in the foot. The keeper didn’t do much, but the deflection flew wide. Wow, was that a game-saver. Robben was almost too open, a perfect pass from Wesley Sneijder, and he dithered a bit too long. Should have been 1-0 Netherlands there!

67 With things settling back down, Capdevila is booked for taking out Robben. So far, the most important things in this match are Casillas’s foot, and Webb’s yellow card.

69 Villa is offside for what I estimate to be the 4,967th time.

70 – Cripes! Villa with an awful miss. Heitinga fell down, the ball went straight to Villa five yards from goal, but his shot hit the prone Heitinga and bounded away. Thought that was the first goal; the goal was “at his mercy,” as announcers say.

75 At risk of sounding silly later in this commentary (or like I made this part up afterwards), the game looks like it’s headed for extra time. I suspect many around the world have fallen asleep or wandered off to do something more interesting, like burning ants with a magnifying glass.

Webb, sensing my boredom, stops the game to yell some more. He’s like your dad on a long car trip. “You two knock that off or I will TURN THIS WORLD CUP AROUND and we will NOT GO FOR ICE CREAM.”

77 Ramos just missed a free header from four yards away. Horrible.

78 Please excuse my caps lock for a moment.

GAAAH! I AM SO SICK OF SPAIN FALLING OVER AT THE SLIGHTEST TOUCH AND ROLLING AROUND CLUTCHING AN ANKLE IN THE HOPES THAT THEY CAN GET SOMEONE SENT OFF. IT HAPPENS ONCE PER MINUTE AND I WANT TO STOMP SOMEONE EVERY TIME.

Thank you.

80 Spain has given up on scoring, and is trying to convince the ref to win the game for them.

82 The last ten minutes of the game: Spain attacks. Holland boots the ball out of bounds. Repeat one million times.

83 Robben again! He managed to get on the end of a punt from the keeper, and somehow behind both defenders. Puyol, desperately, fouls him repeatedly from behind, but in an upset of epic proportions, Robben stays upright and tries to score. Casillas smothers a shot before he can get it off.

Robben wanted a foul called, of course, and is so angry he chases Webb across half the field, screaming. He gets a yellow card for his efforts. If Robben had gone down when Puyol wrapped him up, Webb would have called the foul and sent Puyol off, no question. Robben instead chose to go on and try to win the match. This is better than I expected from Robben, although he immediately ruined it with his temper tantrum.

87 Slouching towards extra time, but Robben has to know he had two glorious chances to win the match and couldn’t convert. Spain’s had more possession, but the chances have been equal.

90 Robin van Persie is offside by three yards. Villa heartily approves, I’m guessing.

END OF REGULATION: NETHERLANDS 0-0 SPAIN

We’re off to extra time. This was… predictable.

91 THREE SPANISH DIVES IN TWO SECONDS GAAAH (/blood spurts from eyes)

On replay, the final count: One “went down too easy” from Cesc Fabregas, one “went down for no reason” from Andres Iniesta, one “blatant dive after tripping over himself” from Xavi. I hope Xavi is eaten by wolves. Howard Webb sensibly ignores Xavi, which is better than I expected from the ref.

94 This World Cup has gone about 5,800 minutes, the majority of which took place this afternoon. The commentary makes it seem more exciting, but nothing – abjectly nothing – is happening for long stretches of this match.

95 Fabregas is away – but Stekelenburg saves with his foot. His second good save of the match, with the two coming more than 90 minutes apart. A better save than Casillas’s game-saver on Robben, too, because Stekelenburg actually had some idea of what he was doing. Casillas was just taking up space.

99 Everyone, please, a warm welcome for Rafael van der Faart!

100 I just like writing “100” in these running diaries.

101 Navas hits the side netting. He reacted like he thought, for a moment, it was in. Worst feeling ever, I suspect.

102 We must give a hand for David Villa, who can be offside in the 102nd minute just as well as he could in the 2nd. He’s a real talent, this one.

105 van Bronckhorst, who’s retiring from football after the World Cup, gets substituted. Harsh, coach. You’re telling me he couldn’t play fifteen more minutes in his entire life?

HALFTIME: NETHERLANDS 0-0 SPAIN

Fernando Torres comes on for Villa, who will now fulfill a lifelong dream by standing in a permanently offside position.

107 For the Netherlands, Edson Braafheid gets drilled in the back of the head with a cross, which causes the commentators to chuckle indulgently. Let’s see you take a soccer ball off the rear of the cranium, guys, then see how hard you laugh.

108 This game is getting sloppy… as has every other extra-time match in the history of soccer, at this point. TO be expected, I guess.

109 Heitinga fouls Iniesta on the edge of the area – and he’s off! Red card for a second yellow! I did not expect Holland to hold out this long with all eleven players on the field. That’s seven yellow cards they’ve earned – by sheer mathematics, you’d almost expect two of those seven to land on the same player. Well, down to ten men, you have to expect Netherlands to play for penalties now.

Replay shows that Iniesta dived. I narrowly avoid another caps lock tirade, mostly because Xavi sails the free kick over the bar.

111 Now it’s Gregory van der Wiel in the book for Holland. Their yellow-card performance is impressive.

112 Ekoku just described a player as at “full pelt.” We are at the point of this game where this makes me laugh out loud. HA ha!

114 No matter who comes out on top, the real winner today is Howard Webb’s family. He’s been on camera more than any three players put together.

115 Sneijder takes a free kick – which takes a deflection and flashes just wide of the post. Boy, would that have been a story.

116 INIESTA SCORES! DRAT!

I’m quite angry about this, as Spain’s theatrics have turned me solidly against them. There was a deflection in the center of the area, Fabregas picked it up and slipped the ball to Iniesta to his right, and the Spaniard made no mistake, scoring what surely must be the late winner.

You will think I’m making this up, but the aftermath results in two more yellow cards – one for Iniesta for taking his shirt off in the celebration, one to Joris Mathijsen for haranguing the linesman. Mathijsen wants offside, but replays show Iniesta was onside by about two yards. No dice. Drat and blast, Spain are going to win this one.

119 There’s just not enough time for the ten men in orange to get the ball back and downfield.

120 Just to sum things up, Xavi gets a yellow card for kicking the ball away. That’s fourteen yellow cards in this game – nine for the Dutch, five for the Spanish. If I remember Tyler’s earlier comment right, the previous record was five.

FINAL: NETHERLANDS 0-1 SPAIN

Spain, supposedly the most offensively breathtaking team in the tournament, wins the World Cup with eight goals in seven games. The 2010 World Cup was about defense, not scoring, unless you happen to be Diego Forlan.

Spain is now your European champions and your World champions, and we can all probably stop writing about how they’ve been underachievers.

This won’t go down as a classic final, which would be surprising except that no major-tournament final is ever a classic. This was a match with long stretches of boredom, punctuated by regular stoppages for yellow cards and lectures from the referee.

Arjen Robben is about to have a long, sleepless night, I suspect.

And after one of the best matches of the World Cup… we got one of the worst. Spain has yet to play a particularly exciting game, winning a bunch of workmanlike 1-0 games to get to the final. Germany has played effervescently a couple of times – 4-0 over Australia, 4-2 over England, 4-0 over Argentina – but looked impotent and distracted in this one. I think they missed Thomas Müller more than they expected; without him, they consistently failed to string much together in the way of attacks.

Carles Puyol, who is variously described as looking like he’s in Anvil, Iron Maiden, Spinal Tap, or “like Steve Coogan with an awesome mullet” (this may just be me), scored Spain’s only goal with a pretty good header in the 73rd minute. Given that he missed the net with a header in the first half that could not have been from more than fifteen feet away, I’d say he’s shooting .500, at best. Still, Spain had the better of the possession, and deserved the win.

(This despite Pedro putting together the worst move of the World Cup: he had the ball, a step on the lone German defender, and an un-covered Fernando Torres in support. He was away on goal. A shot was a good bet to make it 2-0; a cutback for Torres might have been an even better bet. Pedro chose to cut back directly into the defender, then slip and fall over, failing to even get off a shot.)

So let’s set up the third-place game! It’s Germany, the country of Nazis, against Uruguay, the country that used to hide Nazis! (This is unfair, but this kind of description is what the World Cup’s all about.)

Frankly, I don’t care about the third-place game. Neither does anyone, except for soccer junkies and fans who couldn’t get tickets for the final. No one ever remembers who won the third-place game in any competition in any sport, and the World Cup is no different. (The only exception may be bronze medal games in the Olympics. And even then, nobody really cares.)

Sunday’s final, though, now becomes rather meaty, as commentators say. Neither Spain nor the Netherlands has ever won a World Cup, despite being traditional powers. Neither team lost or drew a single game in the qualifying process. The Netherlands hasn’t lost a game for almost two years, and hasn’t lost a competitive game since the quarterfinals at Euro 2008. Spain lost to Switzerland in the group stage and to the USA in the semifinals at the 2009 Confederations Cup, but otherwise hasn’t lost since November 2006.

These, then, may be the two best teams in the world right now. Spain was many pundits’ pick to be here; many thought Holland would lose to Brazil in the quarterfinals, but otherwise was the third-best team at the tournament.

If it’s like Spain’s other games, it may end up as a boring 1-0 tilt. But if we’re lucky, it’ll be like the Netherlands’ last two games: wild matches with goals aplenty. I’m hoping for the latter.