Andres Iniesta has reflected on what it feels like to score the winning goal in the World Cup final, after bagging against the Netherlands in Johannesburg for Spain in 2010.
With the game in the final minutes of extra-time after Spain and the Netherlands had endured a difficult stalemate in the regular 90 minutes, the 2010 World Cup final looked destined for a penalty shootout.
Andres Iniesta, though, had other ideas, smashing the ball into the bottom corner of Maarten Stekelenburg's goal after finding space in the Netherlands box and being played through by Cesc Fabregas. In doing so, the Barcelona midfielder won Spain their first-ever World Cup trophy, though the tournament itself didn't go plain-sailing.
Andres Iniesta reflects on what it felt like to score in the 2010 World Cup final
"At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, we lost our opening match," Iniesta exclusively tells FourFourTwo. "Afterwards, the message wasn’t exactly ‘stay calm’, because when you lose your first game at a World Cup, the rest of the group stage is played under added pressure. But we felt that we’d actually played well against Switzerland.
"If we’d played that game 10 times, we would have won nine, so all we could do was keep trying, not doubt ourselves, and trust that we had the team to move forward. That’s what happened, and we progressed all the way to the final."
Indeed, that first match defeat against Switzerland certainly piled the pressure on Spain, with Gelson Fernandes scoring the game's only goal. Iniesta and his team-mates managed to recover in their next two group games, against Honduras and Chile, to progress to the last 16, where they beat Portugal 1-0.
In fact, that same 1-0 scoreline saw Spain reach the final in South Africa, with Paraguay and Germany - and, eventually, the Netherlands - all felled by a solitary goal.
"It was a tough and uncomfortable final," Iniesta - who ranked at no.15 in FourFourTwo's list of the greatest players of all time - reflects. "Rarely do those kinds of matches turn out to be open and entertaining. The Netherlands changed their style of play because of the opponent they were facing. They played aggressively, they showed us a lot of respect. The match was intense.
"Then in extra-time, I scored the winner. It’s hard to put that feeling into words. The ball came to me from Cesc Fabregas, I controlled it, and time stopped. It was like a slow-motion action. I heard silence. Why? I don’t know.
"I suppose the experience and responsibility from so many years at the elite level taught me to face high-pressure situations like that more calmly. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have even controlled the ball. That was the moment for Spain’s history to change with that World Cup."
With that goal, Iniesta etched his name into the history books, and sat either side of two European Championship titles.
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