Clearly Spain had planned ahead of time to allow Mathijsen to be the free player with time on the ball. However, it was clear that Spain had chosen the right player, illustrated by the fact that Mathijsen was visibly uncomfortable on the ball.

This situation was similar to the first half of the Camp Nou leg of Barca-Inter, when Milito (admittedly playing left back) was given the freedom of the park to tiptoe up to the edge of the final 3rd, but was nowhere near sharp enough with his penetration or delivery to trouble the Inter defense.

Beckenbauer, Matthaus, and other ball handling center backs — Pique, Carvalho, Lucio, Thiago Silva — are marvelous because they bring an uncommon dimension to “Center Half.”

2 studies are at best an indication and are not remotely close to being able to take it as read. I’m not saying that arriving at last second to play game at altitude may be not be bollocks, but the jury is still out.

The first study mentions normal acclimatization,iow the longer you live and train at altitude, the better you will perform. That much is obvious however most visiting teams, be they football or rugby, do not have the luxury of even 2 days let alone days and weeks in order to acclimatize.

This leaves one study in opposition to many years of practice by the world’s leading rugby teams (South Africans and New zealanders take rugby very seriously indeed).

Original point though was that altitude (and dryness) were also a player on the field on Sunday night and that perhaps the Dutch were in some small way trying to use it to their advantage by trading on Spain’s commitment to pressing(running) and therefore trying to make them run the proverbial extra mile.

They don’t appreciate the get-late-in-get-soon-out approach.
They also have done some other posts about the effect of altitude to football worth reading…

I got the impression that this was done, at least some of the time, on purpose by the Dutch. It can’t have come as any surprise to them that Spain was pressing, so the idea then is to make them run extra and harder to try and tire them. Sounds silly doesn’t it ? Uh, no…

because,

What hasn’t been discussed yet, were the playing conditions.

Bear in mind both teams are playing at 1700 m and with a relative humidty of round about 30%. Now check it out for yourselves, European teams play virtually all their football at sea level or close to sea level. A high altitude came would for them be at 400m and then once in a blue moon. The humidity or lack of it is a factor too. High cardio vascular effort in cold and very dry air and you have the delightful feeling of chest burn that Jo’burgers know well.

I am South African and rugby is a big deal here and the altitude of Johannesburg is always treated as a significant factor in the approach to any match. Acclimatization is a problem ,and there is no team in the world cup that spent an entire unbroken month living and training in Johannesburg so neither of these teams were acclimatized (Holland were living near Cape Town for the month). Sea level based rugby teams have discovered a way to offset the altitude and I was surprised when Holland for one didn’t try this – the team will stay at sea level until the day of the match and then travel to Johannesburg at the last possible instance, then get out ASAP(which both teams did, ha, the second part I mean)

So a plan to make a team run more than is neccessary, at 1700m altitude at least, is a good one.

The discussion on them has been very interesting as well. In the second part of the first half and also in huge sections of the second half the Dutch were more in control of the game, and it was more even. Spain only managed a couple of long punts… ZM, I saw that you already posted another part, and maybe a third etc. will follow (I hope)? Could you then please elaborate on those situations as well? To me it seems Spain was far more vulnerable than has been suggested in this comment thread.