Skip to main content

Germany

By
So, another tournament passes, and Germany are the winners. That's four times now, making England's paltry effort in '66 look like a fluke, an aberration.

This tourney was a joy though. Goals galore, kamikaze football and defences that only discovered themselves from the QF and beyond (except for Brazil). The final was entertaining and I am glad not settled by penalties. There was not too much simulation, and no great signs of fan violence either - so hats off to the hosts and the fans. (Definitely an argument for hosting the tournament out of reach of discount flight operators).

So many highlights but my favourite bits, in no kind of order, were:

-Excellent world time-zones allowing full viewing 
-the bite (just bizarre)
-Van Persie's header 
-dancing around like a maniac celebrating Sterling's goal v Italy, only to be told it was snagged in side-netting
-Neymar and Messi being pivotal to their teams
-Spain getting a lesson in football
-Awesome stadia
-The Mexican manager dry humping his players in frenzied celebrations
-James Rodriguez's name, oh and his volleyed goal 
-Russia and Switzerland getting knocked out
-The USA v Belgium game, just all out passion.
-The surprise return of Stevie C, quoting A Few Good Men

There's probably many more, but suffice to say that it was a great tournament. I've loved blogging about it and knowing that a few of you have been reading along (over 1000 visits during the tournament). Thanks again and see you in 4 years.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I am numb

By
The England match left me numbed. Unimpressive, uninspired, lacklustre – however the bottle of champagne I enjoyed with the game certainly took the edge off things. It seems that we, along with France and Italy are suffering some horrendous ‘anti-football’ affliction. If the game was less global then we could put it down to ‘a long hard season in the Premier league’ or ‘the difficulty of being motivated for national team games when the premier league pays so well’; but neither is valid. Neither is this jibulabulani ball business. The teams who pass to each other seem not to suffer. Poor selections and poor play has blighted us, and whilst lots of vitriol heads in the direction of Heskey, we’d do well to remember that the main culprits on Friday were Gerrard and Rooney for having zero patience on the ball and terrible control. Lampard wasn’t much better. At least Barry gave us some sort of stable platform to build from. I expect the introductions of Joe Cole and Jermain Defoe or Peter...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Lalas factor

By
Famous for having a very ginger goatee in 1994. He also managed LA Galaxy, (yes THE galaxy), before getting fired after winning errrm, nothing. A fine CV in which to impart his wisdom. Welcome to ESPN's premier 'soccer' analyst for the next month here in the US. However, I am particularly excited by this development - a stroke of genius by the programming masterminds - in the space of about an hour, he has given me a month's worth of material..... "well, when you think about it, Bob Bradley has done as much as Fabio Capello in his career" "US to win 2-1 on Saturday, I see England getting out of their group but not sure after that" "but what kind of defensive message does this send to the players - I can't agree" (in response to a scarily great tactical suggestion by John Harkes - yes of Sheff Wed fame - to play Landon Donovan, the US' best player, behind the striker to exploit the fact that neither Lampard or Gerrard will ultimately...
Post a Comment
Read more

I missed a game!

By
Due to growing fatigue and the relentless tedium of the first round games I made the executive decision to skip Chili v Honduras and the most part of Spain v Switzerland. Not sure if that is a function of me growing up (something to do with marital responsibility? Not sure whether the wife would agree that me only watching one and a bit games in an evening is really "stepping up to the plate"), or just a result of this being the lowest scoring opening round of matches. I had thought that this decision, combined with sod's law would spark an absolute goal-feast, but the Everton-esque 1-0 results continued. As Steve says, roll on the second round of matches. Sadly the South Africans lived down to expectations and were soundly thrashed by Uruguay. Although a shame, I personally don't like to see a weak host team progress to the knockout stages, because it always ends up being effectively a gimme match for someone in the latter stages. The match to watch today will be M...
Post a Comment
Read more