Perhaps the best reason why it's always a good idea to have legal representation: to avoid the old bait-and-switch from lenders. From this morning's LA Times:

Mortgage lenders call it "dual tracking," but for homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosure, it might go by another name: the double-cross.

Dual tracking refers to a common bank tactic. When a borrower in default seeks a loan modification, the institution often continues to pursue foreclosure at the same time.

Lenders contend that dual tracking simply protects their investment if the homeowner is unable to qualify for new loan terms. Mortgage servicers can lose money if they don't foreclose in a timely manner, and repossessions often are complicated and lengthy.

But regulators and consumer advocates say the practice lulls some homeowners into thinking they are no longer at risk of having their homes taken away. Regulators are now aiming to curtail the practice as part of an overhaul of the foreclosure system.

This sort of stunt simply doesn't happen when a bank realizes that it will be spending the next year or two in court litigating their quicky foreclosure if they act in bad faith. In California, where an attorney is forbidden from even charging a retainer to a client until the loan is modified, this should be a no-brainer.

To much chagrin among local hoops fans, The Lads have suffered through a five-game losing streak over the last week, erasing any chance the defending world champs would catch San Antonio for the best record in the NBA, and ultimately pushing them behind Chicago (and likely Miami as well), in the event they meet up in the Finals. Now, it's more a matter of keeping themselves ahead of Dallas and Oklahoma City in the battle for the 2-seed in the Western Conference, and winning the last two games of the season, against the Spurs tonight and the Sacramento Kings tomorrow, has become vital.

Which was why Coach Phil Jackson's motivational skills are so important, as evidenced in an article in today's local paper of record, authored by beat writer Mike Bresnahan:

Whenever Jackson mentions the Chicago Bulls, it rarely hits home with Lakers fans unless it's a direct comparison of Bryant and Michael Jordan. But some solace was offered by Jackson when he talked about the 1991-92 Bulls, recalling they suffered a "couple devastating losses" in March and April.

"I was concerned. The players said it's just the end of the season and we'll get it back when we get into the playoffs . . . and we did. We got it back."

The Bulls ended up beating Portland in the NBA Finals.

Having been a follower of the sport in the early-90's, Jackson's reminiscence of his earlier tenure coaching the Michael Jordan-led six-time champions certainly resonates with me, although it always seemed to me that the Bulls of that era almost never lost big games, even in the regular season. In fact, during that run Chicago had the best record in the NBA in four of the six championship years, and in only one season did they win the title without having at least the best record in the Eastern Conference, in 1993, when the finished second to the Knicks. So I was surprised to find that the Bulls also had to confront late season demons during that era, even in winning six titles, including the 1992 title mentioned above.

As it turns out, of course, it never happened. Not in 1992, not in any of the seasons in which Jordan, Pippen and supporting cast were winning rings. The season mentioned above, in 1992, the Bulls finished the regular season winning 19 of their last 22 games, en route to a league-best 67-15 record. Of the three games they lost, one was at Cleveland, the team they would meet up with in the Eastern Conference finals, a game in which the Bulls were so pumped to play that they didn't even bother to suit up Michael Jordan.

Maybe Jackson was referring to 1993, when, as mentioned above, the Bulls finished second in the Eastern Conference to New York, and also trailed Western Conference champ Phoenix in the standings, but went on to win their third straight title. In fact, in 1993 the Bulls won 15 of 20 to conclude the season. They did finish behind the Knicks and Suns, and lost to both teams down the stretch, but they were already behind those teams to start with, and their weak, anemic .750 play to close out the regular season was not a factor.

So what championship team was he talking about? 1998, when the Bulls had the top mark in the East but were edged out by Utah (via tiebreaker) for the league's best record? Nope, the Bulls won 16 of 20 at the end, including a thirteen-game winning streak. 1991? The Bulls did have a tepid finish, winning "only" 11 of their last 17, thus enabling Portland to sneak through with the best record in the league by winning 16 straight, but Chicago wasn't the defending champion at the time, and none of its losses down the stretch could really be called "devastating," even by the melodramatic Zen Master. I didn't do a full breakdown of the 1996 or 1997 seasons, but considering the Bulls had two of three best records in NBA history those seasons, it would be hard to claim that they had a rough time of it down the stretch.

In short, the great Bulls teams of the 90's did not suffer "devastating" losses in the regular season in any of the years they won the title, and by no means suffered anything like a five-game losing streak. It could be that in his dotage, using the same brain that remains convinced that Ron Artest, Pau Gasol and Derek Fisher are championship-calibre starters, he simply misremembered the recent past. Considering the Lakers performance tonight, squeaking out a victory over the Spurs' scrub team, it seems to have provided the proper motivation. But what's the excuse for the LA Times writer who permitted that statement to go uncorrected?

Why Wisconsin is important:

Madison has not had demonstrations like this in years, perhaps not since the Vietnam War. Obama's Organizing for America, an offshoot of the Democratic National Committee, has claimed some credit for helping to mobilize the protesters, but the demonstrations have been more bottom-up than top-down. Labor unions have been in the forefront, joined by other progressive groups and angry citizens.

The demonstrations in Madison and the reaction to the House budget measure raise an important question. Have Republicans, in their desire to move boldly and swiftly to deal with state and national budget problems, aroused the progressive wing of the Democratic Party? Through much of the Obama presidency, progressives have been quiescent, lethargic or disappointed. Now they are awake. And not just labor unions. There is a similar reaction among other groups - not just to events in Wisconsin but to some of the cuts in the House bill, such as the amendment to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

If the progressive movement is truly awakened, Republicans could pay a significant price politically. Obama couldn't rouse it in the fall, at least not enough to avoid historic losses in November's midterm elections. Labor leaders couldn't, either. Labor unions spent heavily to try to defeat Republican candidates for governor. Now they see Wisconsin as part of a do-or-die struggle. But if they lose there, and in other states, the movement could be permanently weakened.

The revolt in Wisconsin is the 1995 Gingrich shutdown of the federal government for President Obama, a chance for him to push back against extremists while allowing him a quick and easy way to garner support from one of his beleagured constituencies. Better yet, it discredits the Deficit Fetishists, since Gov. Walker's thuggish and heavy-handed tactics have revealed their true motive: to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy by prioritizing tax cuts and business subsidies over public investment. For liberals, it's win-win.

This classic was later covered by Nirvana:



Hiybbprqag !?! Caliphate !!!

George Packer, on free speech and crazy people:

Loughner might, by chance, have been completely unaware of the climate in his hometown. Or he might have been steeped in it. The point is that the climate is dangerous, in Arizona and elsewhere, and the shootings ought to have prompted its purveyors to step back and do some hard thinking...[A]t a minimum, human decency should have led Sarah Palin to express regret for the dog whistle she directed against Gabrielle Giffords, among others. Instead, in Palinland and across the right, the attitude has been: Never apologize. But this has been the right’s attitude throughout the Obama era, with considerable political success, and I don’t expect this tragedy to bring a change.

Just as many liberals in the blogosphere jumped over the line in trying to make Sarah Palin and John Boehner co-conspirators with Jared Loughner in the tragic events of the past weekend, so too many conservatives are pretending that the violent rhetoric erupting from the Tea Party movement since the accession of Barack Obama to the Presidency was unconnected in any degree or manner to the impulse Loughner had in pursuing a "Second Amendment remedy" to his problems.



Insofar as the Right has steadfastly called for ending all restrictions on the ownership of guns, the ease in which a young man who wasn't allowed on a community college campus without a psychiatric thumbs-up, and who was denied enlistment in the Army because of a history of drug abuse, could somehow purchase and walk out of a store with a Glock 19 should cause anyone with a soul some sleepless nights. This is notwithstanding the political environment fostered by the Tea Party, which fetishises long-dormant right wing talking points straight out of the John Birch Society, and a very disturbing historical pattern emerges: elect a Democrat to the White House, and watch paranoia become mainstreamed, while otherwise sensible conservatives either rationalize the extremism or attempt to pretend it away.

Jared Loughner, and others like him, should not have been able to legally purchase a gun. Period.

Orszag to Join CitiBank: Classy. Technically, though, Citi will keep MERS on title as the beneficiary.

From a NY Times article entitled "Confidence in Abundance, despite an E.R.A. of Infinity":

When the Texas Rangers’ clubhouse opened for reporters after Game 2 of the World Series in San Francisco on Thursday, the only player talking was Derek Holland. Five minutes after the home clubhouse opened Friday, before a workout at Rangers Ballpark, Holland was back at his locker, ready for more.

Clearly, Holland is taking responsibility for one of the worst pitching performances in World Series history. But he also is ready to move on.

“I’m not worried about it,” Holland said Friday. “Today’s a new day. They’ll call on me again. It’s frustrating, but it’s over.”

Holland, a 24-year-old left-hander, came into Game 2 with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning, a runner on first, and the Giants leading the Rangers, 2-0. He threw 11 balls before his first strike, then threw another ball before he was removed.

Three batters. Three walks. Twelve balls, one strike. All the runners scored, leaving Holland with an infinite earned run average for the World Series.

I presume the reason why he is said to have an "infinite earned run average" is that he allowed three earned runs without retiring a batter, so lets look at this statistic in particular. Earned run average is calculated by multiplying nine by the number of earned runs allowed, then dividing that total by the number of innings pitched.

Since Holland failed to retire a batter, he technically didn't "pitch" an inning, so the quotient in this case is zero. When I was learning math back in the day, I was taught that anything divided by zero was "undefined," which didn't necessarily mean the same thing as "infinity." Has the consensus in this field changed since I was in school? Since the Texas Rangers have a team ERA that is numerically defined (10.69, to be exact), it would seem impossible for one of the component parts of that team statistic to be equal to infinity. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Holland has failed to register an ERA in the World Series?

Proud and Elite: Compliments of Kevin Drum, here are my answers to the Berlinski Quiz on my plebian qualities, or lack thereof:

1. Can you talk about "Mad Men?" Yes. It pretty much encompasses all of my cultural thinking.
2. Can you talk about the "The Sopranos?" Yes.
3. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right?" Drew Carey, right?
4. Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? Probably, but I can't say for sure. It may have been when she was still doing shows about Satanic cults molesting children.
5. Can you hold forth animatedly about yoga? No.
6. How about pilates? No.
7. How about skiing? No. Never skied in my life, not once.
8. Mountain biking? No.
9. Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is? Yes, but I know more about who Jimmy Johnson is. Haven't really paid much attention to NASCAR since Dale Earnhardt died.
10. Does the acronym MMA mean anything to you? Yes. It means the games I want to watch on Saturday are going to be preempted at South.
11. Can you talk about books endlessly? Yes.
12. Have you ever read a "Left Behind" novel? No.
13. How about a Harlequin romance? No. Both 12 and 13 are an extremely cliched notion of what's popular in Red State America (as is 9, for that matter)
14. Do you take interesting vacations? As opposed to uninteresting vacations? Sure.
15. Do you know a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada? Yes. It's called Yosemite, and it's one of the most visited sites on the planet.
16. What about an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor? Until reading the Murray column, I had never heard of Boothbay Harbor, so I suppose the answer is no.
17. Would you be caught dead in an RV? If I had the money to buy one and the affluence not to work, I wouldn't mind in the slightest. In fact, I'd probably drive tween Yosemite and Boothbay Harbor. I once even spent the night in my grandpa's RV up in Kernville.
18. Would you be caught dead on a cruise ship? Dumb question. Cruise ships vary between the ultra-luxury variety (ie., Crystal, Silverseas), the premium ships most people think of when they of cruising (like Princess or Cunard) and the three-day booze cruises down to Ensenada. Had Murray really wanted to nail his point, he would drawn the distinction, and said that the New Elite "wouldn't be caught dead" on a Carnival or Royal Caribbean ship, where many of the passengers probably also vacation in Branson and read Paul LeHaye. But since he didn't, yes, I would, and in fact, do.
19. Have you ever heard of of Branson, Mo? Yes, but I wouldn't be caught dead there.
20. Have you ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club? No.
21. How about the Rotary Club? No.
22. Have you lived for at least a year in a small town (besides college)? No. Other than college, I've lived in LA my whole life. So far.
23. Have you lived for a year in an urban neighborhood in which most of your neighbors did not have college degrees? No.
24. Have you spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (other than college)? Yes.
25. Do you have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian? Several, in fact.
26. Have you ever visited a factory floor? Yes.
27. Have you worked on one? No.

So according to this quiz, 16 of 27 answers would identify me as a Red State, potato-eating, Fly-over country, teabagging lumpenprole. Crap.

Dark Satanic Mills: From the Washington Post comes this inevitable story about Foreclosure Madness:

The nation's overburdened foreclosure system is riddled with faked documents, forged signatures and lenders who take shortcuts reviewing borrower's files, according to court documents and interviews with attorneys, housing advocates and company officials.

The problems, which are so widespread that some judges approving the foreclosures ignore them, are coming to light after Ally Financial, the country's fourth-biggest mortgage lender, halted home evictions in 23 states this week.

During the housing boom, millions of homeowners got easy access to mortgages while providing virtually no proof of their income or background. Now, as millions of Americans are being pushed out of the homes they can no longer afford, the foreclosure process is producing far more paperwork than anyone can read and making it vulnerable to fraud.

Ally Financial is now double-checking to make sure all documents are in order after lawsuits uncovered that a single employee of the company's GMAC mortgage unit, a 41-year-old named Jeffrey Stephan, signed off on 10,000 foreclosure papers a month without checking whether the information justified an eviction.

In fact, Mr. Stephan isn't the only "affidavit slave" to have admitted signing documents in support of foreclosures without having actual knowledge that the information he was verifying was true and accurate; a second robosigner was uncovered last week at Ally, and an employee of JPMorgan Chase copped to the same mistake in May, admitting that her eight-person team had been signing off on 18,000 documents a month used in support of foreclosures.

Even more sinister may be the use of fraudulent loan documents, such as assignments between lenders, to justify claims of standing. According to the Post,

In Georgia, an employee of a document processing company, Linda Green, for years claimed to be executives of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and dozens of other lenders while signing off on tens of thousands of foreclosure affidavits. In many cases, her signature appeared to be forged by different employees.

Green worked for a foreclosure document company owned by Lender Processing Services. The company is being investigated by a U.S. attorney in Florida for allegedly using improper documentation to speed foreclosures.

Lenders have already started to withdraw foreclosures that had Green's name on them.

Green also submitted to courts documents that listed "Bogus Assignee" as the owner of a mortgage instead of the real name. In another case, she signed as the vice president of "Bad Bene," a made-up company.

This doesn't even begin to encompass all the home mortgage transactions that utilized the very questionable legal entity knows as "MERS" as a placeholder for high-risk loans, in order to avoid paying recording fees in local counties. More than a few assignments from MERS to the alleged noteholder include signatures from robosigners employed by the very lenders seeking to claim title to the property.

The use of foreclosure mills in judicial foreclosure states like Florida, where judges must sign off on sales beforehand, has created an aggressive and active counterreaction, from attorneys representing desperate homeowners who cannot turn to bankruptcy to modify their loans to reflect the actual value of their depressed property. The failure of Congress to provide the most equitable free market remedy, the cramdown, has meant that many homeowners who caught a tough break in the recent past, and/or overborrowed at the peak of the Bubble, but who now have the financial stability to resume paying their obligations, are unable to obtain realistic terms for future mortgage payments based on the actual value of their houses, and must either abandon the dream of homeownership or throw the Hail Mary. However, anything that mucks up the machinery of the already overburdened foreclosure system will lead to higher costs beforehand, even where the homeowner has surrendered the property, thus complicating the process of getting homes back on the market, and hurting the short-term recovery in housing.

In non-judicial states, where an expedited process allows lenders to avoid the courts in exchange for waiving additional efforts at recovering the debt, the problem is only slightly less acute. Robosigners are involved in fewer transactions, but since those tend to be at the beginning of the process rather than the end, any mistakes could prove especially costly for the banks. In California, recent loans are subject to a requirement that lenders must first contact the delinquent borrower at least thirty days before a notice of default is sent out to discuss repayment options; those affidavits in support tend to be signed by clueless out-of-state pencil pushers who have little contact with the file, and who often use the same tactics as their brethren in Florida. The combination of an especially acute housing crisis in California combined with a very large legal profession will see an explosion of litigation in this area before too long.

One of our great writers, Bill James, writes in defense of the spirit of scofflawery, a uniquely American tradition that, like our lax standards for bankruptcy, is one of the principal reasons our society is more vibrant and entrepreneurial than any other on the planet. James writes:

...America is an immensely creative country, very inventive, extraordinarily dynamic, meaning that things change in America at a staggering pace. Not only do Americans derive fantastic benefits from this, but the entire world derives great benefits from it, from the things that Americans invent and create. And this … nature that we have (which is not truly nature or truly natural) … of giving one another space to ignore the rules and do whatever we think is right is central to our creativity, our inventiveness, and to the power of American society to stagger, adjust, and rush forward.

He's writing specifically about baseball's tendency to produce "cheaters" like Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Branch Rickey, and Roger Clemens, but one could also include athletes such as Reggie Bush, who in his efforts to support his family while in college has taken more excoration, and held to a greater standard of accountability, than a more powerful political figure with the same last name has over the Iraq War. As James points out, our obsession with punishing these "cheats" leads us to ignore far more serious transgressions.

Sign of the Times: Bankruptcy filings have become so great in the LA area that the mandatory meetings of creditors are being scheduled for the Los Angeles Convention Center; the regular site does not have enough space !!!

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the Obama Presidency so far as been the passive role his administration has taken concerning the primary cause of the Great Recession, the collapse of the housing bubble. The HAMP program has been an unqualified failure, at least from the perspective of enabling financially-shaken borrowers an opportunity to modify their loans at rates closer to the current value of their properties; the recent revelation that the Administration was more concerned about creating a program that would stall the inevitable foreclosures for a period of time long enough for banks to get a breather indicates that the lowly consumer was not at the top of Obama’s agenda.

In other areas, too, the Obama Administration has acted in a manner more consistent with being the allies of the banks that gave out the bad loans than trying to aid the borrowers unlucky enough to have been saddled with them. There is nothing to indicate that those banks (I’m talking to you, IndyMac and Aurora) that have been least interested in modifying delinquent mortgages are being made to pay a price for their coldheartedness. Of course, it’s not just the executive branch that has chosen to do nothing; so-called conservatives and libertarians, hearing their master’s voice, fought against restoring free market principles when it meant ending the cramdown prohibition to residential property in bankruptcy. If anything, the policy that the brunt of the housing bubble collapse should be borne by the homeowner has been bipartisan.

Seemingly, with no support coming from either side, and with the cavalry nowhere to be found, middle class homeowners have to fend for themselves, either coming up with funds they don’t have to cure huge arrearages on modest homes they can no longer afford, or losing their homestead to foreclosure. However, as we all learned in school, nature abhors a vacuum, and with bankruptcy an ineffectual option in most cases, more enterprising solutions are being found by the one group with a financial interest in exploiting this situation: lawyers for consumer debtors.

This New York Times article, about an attempt in Florida to clear a backlog in foreclosures, shows what the future holds in store for banks that would rather swallow up homes than negotiate:

Florida’s foreclosure mess is made murkier by what analysts and lawyers involved in the process say are questionable practices by some law firms that are representing banks. Such tactics, these people say, have drawn out the process significantly, making it extremely lucrative for the lawyers and more draining for troubled homeowners.

Doctored or dubious records presented in court as proof of a bank’s ownership have become such a problem that Bill McCollum, the Florida attorney general, announced last month that his office was investigating the state’s three largest foreclosure law firms representing lenders.

(snip)

To be sure, adjudicating foreclosure cases is difficult, complicated by multiple transfers of mortgages and notes when a loan is sold, bewildering paperwork submitted by loan servicers and shoddy record-keeping by the many institutions that touched the mortgages during the byzantine securitization process that fueled the housing boom.

Nevertheless, Florida law requires that before a financial institution can foreclose on a borrower, it must prove to the court that it actually has the standing to do so. In other words, it has to show that it is truly the owner. And this is done by demonstrating ownership of the note underlying the mortgage.

Borrowers’ lawyers say they confront dubious practices, often involving false documentation “proving” who owns the note on a given property. Typically, they say, this involves questionable affidavits asserting ownership of a note because the actual document has been lost or cannot be produced. Because the affidavits are often signed by bank representatives who have a stake in the outcome, they should not be allowed as evidence, borrowers’ lawyers say.

Although the article focuses on the difficulties the Florida system has given those who represent homeowners in foreclosure litigation, perhaps the more telling issue, a lede buried in the article, is the fact that increasingly in states like Florida and California (which uses a non-judicial system of foreclosure), homeowners are aggressively using the courts to fight foreclosures. This phenomenum, which was almost unheard of a decade ago, has proven to be a godsend to struggling borrowers, who can now use the same shortcuts the banks developed to save money when it was bundling high-risk loans during the heyday of the Housing Bubble against the banks.

Challenging the lender's standing to foreclose has opened up a new front in the housing wars, a transition away from bankruptcy as the last recourse for the Forgotten American trying to stop foreclosures. Since litigation, real or threatened, can be more expensive to institutional lenders than negotiating an equitable modification of a loan, especially since the resale of foreclosed homes becomes more problematic when there is a lis pendens attached, this gambit holds the promise of being a more efficient way of saving your home, while at the same time being less expensive to the consumer than a bankruptcy filing or a HAMP agreement.

Evidence that being Athletic Director at USC causes you to become the world's biggest asshole:

First Mike Garrett, now this clown:

Former star USC quarterback and NFL player Pat Haden guested on the Dan Patrick Show today. Haden, who was recently hired as USC Athletic Director, was asked by Patrick during the interview: “If you were Reggie Bush, would you give back the Heisman?”

Haden, after a long pause and sigh, replied:

“If I were Reggie Bush with Pat Haden’s soul, yes.“

Patrick: “Does he have your soul?”
Haden: “I don’t know Reggie Bush.”

So, if Reggie Bush had the soul of a super-rich equity-swapping corporate lawyer from LA, he would have "returned" the Heisman Trophy he won five years ago, for violating the NCAA's malum prohibitum bar on receiving money to play football. Similarly, if Pat Haden had Reggie Bush's soul, he would have returned the money he was paid by the Rams from 1976 to 1981 for impersonating an NFL quarterback.

Without a doubt, the best TV ad run by a losing candidate in this election cycle:

Stay classy, GOP....

Perhaps it's not the biggest story to come out of the world of hoops this past fortnight, but one of the ramifications of the LeBron James signing last week is the decision by each of the twelve players on the gold-medal winning 2008 Olympic basketball team to take a powder in this year's 2010 FIBA Championships. The tournament, to be played in Turkey starting in late-August, has always been the sickly step-child of the Olympics, although the participation of a number of key players on the 2006 bronze medalists, including James, current Heat-mates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, as well as Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony, presaged their commitment to the national team in the run-up to Beijing. I suppose nothing would put a damper on the South Florida hype more than losing James or Wade (Bosh, with his two playoff appearances in seven years, strikes me more as the Larry Fine of the trio) to a season-ending injury chasing a loose ball against Tunisia.

Coach K will still have notables like Chauncey Billups, Rudy Gay, Amar'e Stoudemire, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose at his disposal, which should provide a stronger, younger nucleus for London in 2012. Moreover, since the US has not won the title since 1994, in spite of having access to NBA talent (the 2002 team, playing at home in Indianapolis, finished sixth, in spite of having Paul Pierce, Jermaine O'Neal, Baron Davis, Ben Wallace, and Michael Finley on the roster), any sort of victory that doesn't rely on having Kobe Bryant (injured) carry the load again will be appreciated.

World Cup Final--Spain 1, Netherlands 0: It took 117 minutes, but Spain finally overcame the Orange-clad Stormtroopers to win their first World Cup. Don't believe me? Ask Johann Cruyff (website in Spanish):

Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff has launched a scathing attack on Netherlands' display in the World Cup final, deriding it as "anti-football".

The Dutch received nine yellow cards, and a red card for Johnny Heitinga, as they lost 1-0 to Spain in South Africa.

"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."

(snip)

Cruyff, along with many others, believed Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong were lucky not to be sent off before half-time, Van Bommel for a tackle from behind on Iniesta and De Jong for kicking Xabi Alonso in the chest.

"They should have been down to nine immediately, then they made two [such] ugly and hard tackles that even I felt the damage," said the 63-year-old Cruyff.

"It hurts me that Holland chose an ugly path to aim for the title."

Spain may well be the most unexplosive, least feared team to win the World Cup since England in 1966. Winning four consecutive games by a score of one to nil will do that to your reputation, as well as an offense that achieved the dubious distinction of scoring eight goals in the entire tournament, the fewest of any champion in the tournament's history. Which isn't to suggest that Spain's title was undeserved, since there was nothing flukish about any of their wins; this was definitely not your father's Spanish team, the Cleveland Cavaliers of soccer. But as the Swiss showed in the opener, Spain was a very beatable team, and most of the squads that participated in this World Cup, including the U.S. and Mexico, would not have needed to elevate their game that much to match what Switzerland did.

Sorry, but there's no vintage video of past World Cup games between Spain and Holland, simply because the World Cup finalists have never played each other in this tournament. Not only that, but they've never been placed together in the same qualifying group. They've never played against one another in the next biggest international tournament, the European Championship, or in the third, the Confederations Cup. To find the last time the two teams have met with anything on the line, you have to go back to 1983, when the teams battled to qualify for the Euros the following year.

That is itself an interesting story. Head-to-head, Spain and Holland both had 2-1 wins against the other at home, so the matter of qualifying came down to how well they fared against the other teams in that group; specifically, who could pound the bottom team in their group, Malta, by the most goals. The sport of soccer not having figured out yet that games needed to be played simultaneously to maintain integrity when something like goal differential was involved as the tie-breaker, Spain went into the final qualifying game knowing that if it beat the Maltese by eleven or more goals, it would qualify for the 1984 European Championships. The Dutch, having played their final game four days earlier, could only sit on their hands and watch.

Spain scored first that night, but Malta came right back and tied the game up ten minutes later. After 25 minutes, the game was tied, but the Spanish scored two quick goals to retake the lead. That's where the game still til halftime, 3-1; Spain needed to somehow score nine goals in the second half to win the group. Which it then proceeded to do, obliterating Malta 12-1, and sending them on their way to the Euros, where they finished second. This they managed in spite of the fact that Spain had not scored more than three goals in a game up to that point, and had not beaten anyone by more than two goals. A fishy result for all concerned, one that still rankles the Dutch:

Germany 3, Uruguay 2 [Third Place]: The Kings of Bronze of international soccer, Germany, "won" their fourth third-place game in soccer's showcase tournament, coming from behind in the second half to win a typically lively affair. Thomas Müller and Luis Suárez, both barred by infractions from playing in their team's semifinal losses, figured prominently in the scoring, Müller knocking in a rebound in the 19th minute off a rebound for the Germans' opening goal, and Suárez coolly setting up the Uruguayan opener a few minutes later. On paper a meaningless game, the consolation final has usually been a connoisseurs' feast, in that one of the teams is usually lucky to have advanced this far, and with the fortuitous participation of the fifth-best team from South America in the festivities, together with the Germans playing a very young line-up geared towards 2014, today proved no exception.

Germany and Uruguay have played each other three times before in the Cup, each before the fall of the Iron Curtain allowed us to retire the moniker "West Germany." In 1966, they drew each other in the quarterfinals; the West Germans were expected to breeze, but after scoring an early fluke goal struggled to put away the Uruguayans, until a rather questionable non-call in the penalty area pissed off the South Americans, who were convinced that the powers-that-be had it in for non-European teams. Deciding that the best revenge was to play kick-the-kraut the rest of the way, at the expense of having two of their players ejected, Team Uruguay collapsed in the final twenty minutes, losing 4-0, and hastened their fall from the ranks of world soccer powers thereafter:

The teams also met in a first-round battle in 1986, resulting in a 1-1 draw. The West Germans thoroughly dominated the game, but had to play catch-up almost the entire way after a bone-headed back pass by the usually dependable Thomas Berthold allowed Uruguay a cheap early goal. Relentless pressure paid off for the Germans in the final ten minutes, allowing both teams to walk away with a point:

But it was back in 1970 that the two countries played each other in a game that, like tomorrow's, really didn't matter, for third place. The Germans, incorporating some of the stars of the team that would dominate '70's soccer, had breezed through the first round, winning all three of their games, then rallied from two goals down in the second half to stun the defending champions, England, in overtime, 3-2, thereby defeating their historic rival for the first of many times. In the semis, against Italy, they played one of the classic games in the history of the World Cup, a see-saw, back-and-forth game that saw three lead changes, an injury time goal by the Germans to tie the game at the end of regulation, and five extra time goals before the Azzurri finally won, 4-3.

Uruguay, on the other hand, had played a distinctly unmemorable tournament, scoring a grand total of four goals in five games (half of them in their opener against Israel). Somehow, they finagled their way it into the semis, where they took an early lead, but were promptly and easily dumped by future champ Brazil, 3-1. Having done absolutely nothing to merit their high placement, and playing against a German team that had played 240 minutes of soccer in the previous five days, Uruguay then proceeded to have its best game of the Cup, but to no avail, losing 1-0. The highlights: