So it's all over. Spain secured the World Cup on Sunday night and the overriding feeling in the UK press is that football won the day over Dutch thuggery.

While the Spanish stuck to their style, the Netherlands embraced brutality and were lucky to finish the first-half with 11 players still on the pitch.

Writing in The Sun, Steve Howard sums up the feeling under the title "Dutch disgraced the World Cup".

"They were the finalists who died of shame. The finalists who disgraced both a tournament and European football. The finalists who made the world fall out of love with Dutch football. It is almost beyond belief it all came to this.

The only comfort is that Spain's name is on the trophy for the first time, after Andres Iniesta spared the new world champions the lottery of a penalty shootout. Brave, admirable Spain, who stuck to their footballing principles on the night Holland deserted theirs.

Had Vicente Del Bosque's side not won, it would have been one of the greatest travesties of all time. Had Bert van Marwijk's cynical Dutchmen taken the trophy home, no one outside Holland would have been cheering."

Writing in The Guardian, Richard Williams is not quite so gushing about Spain. Although they didn't resort to kicking lumps out of the Dutch, they did indulge in a bit of negative, anti-football themselves.

“No more all-European finals, thank you very much. The one four years ago that ended with Zinedine Zidane's head-butt and a penalty shoot-out was bad enough. But no one seriously expected a classic in Berlin that day. Last night's match was supposed to be a fascinating contest of stylistic nuances, a collision of rival philosophies featuring some of the finest attacking talents in the modern game.

But as we had to wait until deep in extra time for Andrés Iniesta's goal, 84,000 people in the stadium and a reputed 700 million television spectators were left wondering when the football was going to start.

Didn't someone tell the players that Nelson Mandela was in the house, never mind Shakira, Charlize Theron and 16 heads of state? Football is about 22 men in search of a result, nothing more and nothing less, but a little entertainment never goes amiss.”