It's the end of the World (Cup) as we know it and I feel fine

Of the teams that were considered to have a chance at advancing to the finals I think it would have been hard to find 2 teams that I care less about than Holland and Spain. Give me a scrappy underdog (preferably from the developing world) or even an exciting Germany or Argentina to root for, or if I can't have than then at least an obnoxious Portugal to root against. Instead I was left with 2 teams that I had barely followed at all, from countries I have never visited, nor have any sort of ties to. I couldn't even use my "root for the poorer country if all else is equal" fallback strategy. Only in retrospect did I realize that I should have been rooting for Spain as there is just something icky about the Netherlands winning in South Africa. (Thanks to Lysondra for pointing this out.) The only thing that would have been worse would have been a Netherlands v. England final.
I watched the match with Karen and Ashish and one of their co-workers Kallol (originally from Calcutta getting his MPH at Michigan) at Kallol's friend's apartment. His friend was also from India and is the country director for Save the Children. The match started at midnight and went until 3AM. I fell asleep at various points throughout. To show how little I cared, when the score was tied I rooted for whoever looked like they were going to score (in hopes it would not go into overtime) and once Spain scored, I decided to root for them to win (for the same reason). The match itself was so boring, so unskillful and so nasty. Not the best way for the World Cup to end. Apparently FIFA was upset that Nelson Mandela did not attend the closing ceremony. I mean it would have been nice if he had, but the fact that the is in ill-health, is in his 90s and recently lost his great-granddaughter in a world cup related car accident all seem like good enough reasons to not go.
On the way to the apartment Karen and Ashish picked up Charlie and me in their car. Their driver Sumon (the one who speaks no English) is also not the most attentive driver. He nearly ran over Charlie as he was trying to get in the car. I feel bad for Karen because she speaks no Bangla, so has absolutely no way to communicate with him. This made me appreciate Syed, our driver, all the more. He may be racist, and angry but at least he really likes us and is a safe driver.