Just a quick report on the World Cup final, which I watched from the noisy, beery interior of Sacramento’s Tapa the World. Despite the fact that basically no “hispanoparlantes” were in attendance, except for one or two Mexican guys from the kitchen, the mostly Anglo crowd was solidly behind Spain.  I found the one free stool at the bar and planted myself there, next to some restaurant guy who was off duty and who was drinking rather heavily (though not a vino tinto, as he should have been).  Interesting, bartenders and waiters alike at Tapa the World were treating Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout – also known as the greatest beer ever brewed – as if it were liquor (which it kind of is, at 9% alcohol content), drinking little mini-glasses at regular intervals.  I was just impressed that Old Rasputin was on tap!  I had a very nice cheese plate featuring a satisfyingly hard and salty Roncal and some bread and olives.  It would have gone nicely with a glass of rioja.  

The game itself was interesting, though not what I expected.  Both teams seemed nervous early on, and Spain was not nearly as in command of the ball as they were in their semi-final match against Germany (surprisingly, match statistics claim Spain had ball possession for 57% of the game).  Both sides missed some fairly good opportunities and fouled each other with a vengeance.  There was little in the way of pretty football a la Spain x Germany, but the match was generally exciting to watch.  Spanish stars David Villa and Sergio Ramos failed to score, and about the flashiest thing on the field were the hazmat orange uniforms of the Dutch side.  Spanish goalkeeper Arturo Casillas made some nice saves, and at the end of regulation time, the match was still scoreless.  Eventually, in the second period of overtime, Andrés Iniesta scored for Spain and it was basically over after that.  A couple of minutes later, Tapa the World erupted into a loud cheer – I think people wanted to sing Spain’s fight song, but no one knew what it was.  There were a few stray “olés!”  I had seen what I had come to see, and happy to see Spain win their first World Cup final, I left and headed home.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 11th, 2010 at 9:46 pm and is filed under sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.