Aaah, what a wonderful World Cup it’s been. I can’t remember when I last saw a tournament half so entertaining. Almost every match had something to remember it by.
What I particularly loved was the unpredictability of the whole thing – Spain, Italy, England all made brief appearances and left early, leaving the field open for some of the not so well-known teams. I ended up rooting for so many under-dogs – Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica. However, all through I knew that Germany was going to be the likely winner, they were too formidable a team overall. And very deserving World Cup champions!
Another spectacular thing was the goals. Lovely! There were tons of speedy counter-attacks and on the whole, the defense of most teams were strictly put to the test. All the teams played to win. No parking the bus and deep defensive tactics, which made it really wonderful and entertaining.
Here are some of the most memorable World Cup moments all captured through people’s Vines.
Gah! This is Arjen Robben from Netherlands diving in the most unspectacular way to get a penalty chance in the match against Mexico. I wouldn’t have minded it so much if he had resorted to this when Netherlands was a goal down, but they had already equalized. This was downright cheating. Plus, which athlete falls in such a clumsy fashion? He ought to be ashamed of himself!
I was so glad when Netherlands lost the next match. They are a good team, but bad karma always comes back to get you.
Another team with bad karma was Brazil. This was probably the first World Cup where I didn’t root for Brazil – I almost always support them. However the very first match against Croatia was a downer and I knew there was no point supporting them. They were never going to make it all the way through. That they made it this far was because of a miracle refereeing goof-ups.
The match Brazil played against Chile was sad, but the real heart-breaker was the Brazil vs Colombia match. I watched zapped as people pushed and tripped and kicked each other throughout the match.
Thiago Silva’s, (the Brazilian Captain) weird attempt to steal the ball from the opposing goalie was such a pathetic rookie move. I was face-palming at that point. A kick into Neymar’s back was another low point in a match that promised so much but delivered so little on the total football front. As soon as Neymar was stretchered out I knew this would be the end of the road for Brazil. No way would they progress further.
But I never imagined just how bad the next match would be for them. They lost 7-1 to Germany. At a certain point I was sure I was seeing things. The second Toni Kroos goal – was that a replay? Good lord no! It was yet another goal! It was sad to see them brought so low, but in the end I think this could be a good thing for Brazil – they definitely need to stop living off their past glories and individual heroics and focus on the game as a whole.
The weirdest thing that happened would have to be Luis Suarez of Uruguay biting an Italian player. I never in my life have seen an adult behaving in such a juvenile fashion. I mean that’s the way my 2.6 year old son resolves his issues!
I can’t hate on him too much though. The whole incident was hilarious and paved the way for the next match – where a toothless (haha! see what I did there?) Uruguay lost to Colombia. And what a fantastic goal that was by James Rodriguez. Awesome! The best in the tournament. He was definitely the deserving winner of the Golden Boot.
Which is why I hated their loss to Brazil in the quarter-finals so much. I definitely wanted more of their goal celebrations 🙂 .
So, of course once the quarter-finals were done, all the entertaining teams were out and the serious play it for keeps teams were in. The semi-finals were blah. As mentioned before, the Brazil vs Germany match was a total farce and the Netherlands vs Argentina match was a total snooze.
And it looked like the finals between Germany and Argentina was going to be super-boring too. No goals were being scored, just a lot of exciting runs wimping off into nothing. I have to say the defense in both the teams was top-notch. The only difference was that Argentina squandered their opportunities while Germany made full use of the one they got.
I also like that they won the tournament playing total football without being absolute dicks about it 🙂 .
So did you follow the World Cup this year? What were your top footballing moments?
I didn’t follow it, and I mildly regret it. It sounds like it was a lot of fun. I could probably have gotten into it if I’d started early, but by the time I started hearing about it, I felt like it was too far in for me to start choosing sides. :p
I did hear about the biting though! WTH??
@readingtheend:disqus It was a ton of fun. The last world cup in 2010 was very defensive and quite a few matches were boring. 2014 had some lovely football, a lot of controversies, and overall very entertaining. Even the bite was funny!