Watching a soccer match while you put out a newspaper is a bit tricky. Especially when the big-screen is over your right shoulder and around a pillar. But I saw more than enough of Spain-Holland to be hit by this thought at about the 75th minute:

If I had never seen a soccer game before, and the 2010 World Cup final was my first … I might never watch soccer again.

It was that ugly.

A chippy, angry, disjointed, crude and (for 115 minutes)  scoreless affair.  Sieges of one side apparently unable to go forward and the other unwilling to go forward. Bumps, nudges and (this is key for American audiences) just epic levels of “I’ve been shot” flopping that at first mystifies and then infuriates those familiar with any of the contact sports … and unfamiliar with soccer’s elaborate and unending play-acting.

Oh, and there’s this: The one and only goal was a direct result of another palpably blown call of the simpler yet more significant sort. What a sport.

Worst final since …?

Maybe since the last one? That unsightly Italian shootout victory over France that is remembered (perhaps for the best) for Zinedine Zidane being red-carded after headbutting Marco Materazzi.

Or maybe since 1990, when Germany defeated Argentina 1-0 on a penalty shot. In a match that had the Argentines at about half-strength because of accumulated yellow cards. Which led to FIFA changing the yellow-card rule at World Cups.

Fact is, we haven’t seen a really riveting final since 1986: Argentina 3, Germany 2. And more than half the people on the planet have no memory of that. For all of those kids (and some are hardly kids), we’re asking them to take it on faith that the World Cup can, in fact, produce an interesting final.

This one was not only unattractive, it was annoying.

Most of the “expert” criticism during the match was directed at the referee, England’s Howard Webb,  the poor sap who was put in charge of what almost had to be train wreck.

Webb was hand-picked by FIFA to oversee the final. It’s a reward, see. It means that FIFA thought that he and his linesmen were the best in the world at officiating a match. Remember. The best. In the world.

When his appointment was announced, back on Thursday, it came with the notes that 1) Webb had not shown a red card in three matches here and 2) he had not awarded a penalty.

Clearly, then, those were important considerations to the FIFA guys overseeing the officials. No red cards, so that we avoid the potential for 11-on-10 for, oh, an hour … and no penalties, so that we avoid the still-scarring memory of that 1990 debacle.

But forces were at work here to leave Webb in an untenable situation. He was almost certain to be excoriated for not doing his job correctly — no matter what sort of job he did.

1. Spain plays a refined, even precious sort of soccer.  The Spaniards like to hold the ball, forever and ever, dinking it here and there, hither and yon. A sort of soccer as patty-cake. Soft touches as they sorta walk it up to the attacking end and, once semi-close, they seem to look at things, ponder, knock it about some more and, perhaps, finally, take a crack at goal. Sometimes.

Spain ultimately frustrated Germany in the semifinal with this squishy sort of play. Germany sat back for a long time, unwilling to be drawn out by Spanish daintiness … but when the Germans recalled they would have to score to win, they came forward and Spain seized control of the game in the second half and got the Puyol header off a corner. 1-0.

2. Holland is not a dainty side. The Dutch can hold the ball fairly well, and their technical skills are good, but they are not Spain. They saw the Germany match. They understood what went on.  The Dutch also are bigger than Spain — but most everyone is.

Spain is an unusually tiny side, even by soccer standards. Not only short, but remarkably slight. You could carry around Xavi and Andres Iniesta (each allegedly 5-foot-6) in your pockets …and David Villa (5-foot-8) and Carles Puyol (5-9) in your backpack. Some of their taller guys also are stick thin.

Now, it’s grand that soccer enables men who are barely under the global height/weight norm to perform at the highest level of the sport. But when they are precious in style as well as tiny in size, that invites the sort of tactics the Dutch chose. Which was to knock Spain around.

That is what reduced the game to thuggery, on the Dutch side, and play-acting on the Spanish. To be sure, the Spaniards were mugged a time or 10. (The Nigel De Jong cleats-to-the-chest challenge on Xabi Alonso being the ultimate example, and you can see that caught on film here in the pages of The National.) But the Spanish also amped up (as if it were possible) their flopping. For every crude Dutch challenge there were two manufactured Spanish dives. (I believe that was a reverse three-and-a-half somersault with a tuck.)

It made for about 110 minutes of guys flopping around the pitch like so many tunas reeled into an open boat. It meant almost no flow, no pace, no rhythm to the match and constant whining to the referee. I mean, Kobe Bryant in a seven-game series doesn’t complain to the officials as much as the Spanish and Dutch did last night.

So, where was the referee in all this? Well, Mr. Webb was handing out yellow cards like candy on Halloween. Fourteen, a finals record, by the end of the match.

But, mostly,  he warned. He chided. He shook his finger in the sternest possible fashion. What he tried to do was … let the lads play. Which pretty clearly was what FIFA expected from him when he was announced as the ref and the “no reds and no penalties” stats were trotted out.

Webb’s choices were to be the first official in World Cup final history to send off, oh, two Holland players in the first half hour and reduce the match to farce … or to let the grabbing and shoving and ugly tackling and circus-clown flopping go on and on and on … reducing the match to a farce.

Oh, goodness, was it ugly.

Holland had a few chances to score, as the match droned on, and given that one goal would have been enough, in the first 90 minutes, we must concede that their tactics were spot-on, however cynical. Popping Arjen Robben loose a time or three with a chance to bury one. The most memorable instance being Robben going in one-v-one on Iker Casillas, and allowing the Spanish keeper to come out too close to him before shooting … off Casillas’s leg. (Or maybe his arm.) How long will Robben replay that one over in his mind? If he takes one more touch either left or right, maybe he gets a shot at an empty goal, provided Puyols hadn’t gotten into the play by then.

So, Spain did what it does. Dinking and parrying, and getting all theatrical when they got knocked around by the bigger, less-refined side. (And you could just see the thought bubbles over their heads: “Maybe if I just sell this flop even harder than the last, we’ll get that Holland red card we expect and deserve.”)

So, the Dutch did what they had to do if they were to win. Even as many expert observers were expecting, if not demanding, that they go down in a blaze of open-field glory, losing maybe 3-1 for the amusement of the masses and edification of the pundits. Sorry. Holland has been there and done that (1974, 1978), and playing second banana doesn’t end with a trophy being handed over to your captain.

(And, an aside: Holland saw the Champions League semifinal when Inter Milan refused to run the field with Barcelona, which contributes a big chunk of the Spanish national side, and noted that Inter’s “anti-football,” as it was derided,  concluded with an Inter victory. Hmm. Sounds like the gameplan for a World Cup final.)

And the referee, poor Mr. Webb, did what he was expected to do. He let them play. Had FIFA wanted an activist judge, they would have sent one out there. But no. They wanted a guy who would try to manage a game without reducing one side or the other, or sending parades of players to the penalty spot.

It was almost preordained … unless you thought Holland suddenly was going to try to match Spain touch for touch. But it ends with Holland excoriated for not playing the “right” way (to lose) and for Webb not making himself the star of the championship match by dismissing players left and right.

What it reminded me of was a batch of NBA Finals, where the Los Angeles Lakers were clearly the more skilled team, but the Boston Celtics/Chicago Bulls/Detroit Pistons were the more physical. As often as not, the thugs won. The Lakers complained, but they also knew what they were getting into.

The difference here was that no one seemed to anticipate where this match was heading. They hadn’t thought it through. Sigh.

But even the inevitable came with the usual monstrous refereeing gaffe. Almost no match at this World Cup was without one.

This may well be forgotten soon outside the borders of the Netherlands, but …

Holland was at the Spanish end in the 115th minute. Wesley Sneijder had a restart and took a long crack at goal that quite clearly went off the shoulder/arm of a Spain defender. I saw it when it happened. Didn’t even need the replay (though it confirmed what I had seen). And this is the single most maddening issue about soccer to legalistic American sports minds: the astonishing number of sideout/corner/goal kick calls that are blown in every match.

So, what should have been a Dutch corner … suddenly turned into a Spanish attack. Casillas punted the ball back, and the exhausted Dutch, caught a bit forward for the restart (which should have led to a corner) scrambled back, but never got into position, never got themselves in order,  before Iniesta appeared in the box and rifled a shot into the goal, and that was that.

Let’s concede that Spain deserved to win by being the slightly less ugly of Cinderella’s sisters … but the entire winning sequence began with a missed call of enormous proportions.

What a game. I will miss the World Cup for its pageantry and color and multinational goofiness, but I will not miss it for its inconsistency, its rigidity (no instant replay) and its shokcing (and often meekly accepted) unfairness.

The World Cup is best seen at a remove, with some curiosity in how Cameroon might look against Japan. Checking in for a few minutes here or there, but not studying the thing up close.

The final, however, allows us to see the sausage being made and, as is so often the case, it was unappetizing in the extreme.