One team — Spain — isn’t a major shocker to be in the finals. The team is loaded with stars at every position and can play with the best of the world. Talent-wise, they could be the best team in the tournament, but they’ve struggled a few times — most notably in their loss to Switzerland. This will be Spain’s first final appearance, a somewhat surprising fact.

The Spaniards had a more challenging route on their way to the final, playing a powerful Portugal side, a surprising Paraguay squad and a young and quick German team. They won each knockout game 1-0, surprising as they have a wealth of talent that should have found the back of the net a few more times.

The other team — Holland — is a perennial European powerhouse, but can never seem to perform when it matters most. They’ve been to the finals twice before, both in the ’70s, but have never won the whole deal. They’ve been on an international roll of late, winning 10 straight and not losing in 25 matches.

The Dutch, although extremely talented, really faced only one scary game in the elimination round. Slovakia was discarded with a 2-1 victory by which the Netherlands advanced to face the most feared team of all, Brazil. The Dutch went down early, but came back and handed Brazil its first loss after leading at halftime by a 2-1 score. Holland then went on to defeat an up-and-coming group, Uruguay, 3-2.

What to expect in the final game could go one of two ways, in my eyes.

The first way is a wide-open scoring match. With David Villa, Spain has a bona fide world-class scorer along with several other marksmen such as Fernando Torres. The Netherlands, with its total football strategy, has 10 players who could be threatening to score at any given time, but four are especially scary — Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben, Robin Van Persie and Dirk Kuyt. The two teams could easily decide to play wide open and fast and score several goals each. I wouldn’t be surprised if the winning team has three or four goals.

Or the game plan from both teams, though unlikely, could be to stifle the other’s attacks. I see this as more of an option by the Spanish, who play a more traditional game and have shown dangerous counter attack runs, including a stunning, almost half-field shot by Villa against Chile. I don’t really see the Netherlands slowing down the game that has proven to be so successful for almost 30 matches.

With the two options, I’m looking for the Netherlands to control the pace of the game and give us all a fun show of wide open, high-paced soccer and for the Dutch to pull away for a full team effort to win the game.

Before the tournament started, I picked the Dutch to win it all in our World Cup preview.

I’m one win away from picking the winner — knock on wood — that a lot of other soccer analysts were unable to do. Sure, I was picking with not a whole lot of background and easily could have picked based purely on how awesome the all-orange uniforms are, but I felt some form of expertise behind it.

And in reality, all of my picks were decent. Only a few botched calls — and one major mistake — put a damper on my picks. In the semifinals I had Holland, France, Spain and Argentina. Spain and Holland, obviously were there. Argentina was close, just a loss to Germany away. And France, oh boy, was I wrong.

So, why did I pick the Dutch?

Simply, they’re underachievers and are due for the victory. More in-depth: They’re a very talented squad with a very unique and effective way to play the game, as well as the heart to finally pull it all together.