Germany played spectacular soccer from the beginning of the tournament until the end. Starting with the 4-0 win over Portugal, then the 7-1 win over Brazil, and finally the 1-0 win over Argentina, Germany has been the highest scoring team in the tournament and has barely had any goals scored on them throughout. What few goals were scored on Germany tended to be unimportant, giveaway goals after the match had already been decided. Only Ghana's 2-2 tie of Germany ever had Germany on its backfoot. What a completely dominating performance. We'll probably never see such a thing again. 7-1 in the semifinal against the host country, the nation with the biggest football history of all, Brazil? You can't make up scenes like that.
Argentina had a splendid defense but no offense outside of Messi. It would have been a shame if they had beaten the fire-hot Germans through some miracle of defense and penalty kicks, because that's all Argentina had to call upon.
Looking back, Netherlands was such a superb team. The fact that they couldn't score a goal on Argentina doesn't look so bad when it took 113 minutes for Germany to do so. Their rout of Brazil, 3-0, in the third place game looked just as good as their rout of Spain, 5-1, at the beginning of the tournament. If it had been Germany-Netherlands in the final, I bet the final would have been a lot more exciting than 1-0.
I feel bad for the Netherlands. Once again they come so close to winning the World Cup, but once again they have to wait another four years. However, Germany is the best team in the world right now, and it's nice to see Germany win its first World Cup after its reunification. The last thing I want people thinking is 'it was better when we were just West Germany,' so this win was important as a glue to keep the two halves of the country celebrating together their first united victory on the world stage.
Yet again, whites prove their athletic superiority in the beautiful
game. Whenever you need both speed, strength, and skill to win a game,
whites come to the forefront, leaving blacks in the dust. No
sub-Saharan African team even reached the quarterfinals this time
around, and teams with heavy black contingents like Brazil, France, and
the USA were also left behind in the dust. Germany, Argentina, and the
Netherlands, ranking 1-3, were all three of them practically all-white
squads. Furthermore, it wasn't just a white team that won this time,
but a nordic Aryan blond squad of rearing lions that once again confirms
the results we see every Olympics (the blond, blue-eyed athletes win a
disproportionate share of the medals, as well as Nobel Prizes and every
other award on Earth). When are we going to admit that Hitler's pride
in Germany was completely justified by the number of medals Germany
raked in during the 1936 summer Olympics? Just look at those four World
Cups sitting on Germany's cupboard, or look at the regions highlighted
in Charles Murray's book Human Accomplishment, and explain where exactly
Hitler's theories about nordic supremacy went wrong.
This World Cup was pretty clearly the best World Cup of all time. Not only were the games close and exciting, the goal scoring tied 1998 for the record highest, and there were plenty of upsets along the way. In the end, the best team won the tournament, which also makes the tournament that much more satisfying. The World Cup has a checkered past where, for the most part, many nations didn't participate either in the tournament or the qualifying rounds, which renders the title 'World Cup' moot. There were so few slots in the tournament that most continents didn't even get to participate until 1998. This 20th World Cup, however, was bought into by the whole world and everyone tried their best. The French didn't lose the tournament with a silly headbutt. The final wasn't a demolition derby like how Netherlands treated Spain last tourney. The ball wasn't oddly shaped, causing strikers to miss the goal with wildly sailing shots. There were no refereeing crises of consequence, like England's disallowed goal against Germany. No dives were rewarded with penalty kicks. Goals were scored via legitimately splendid plays. Robin van Persee's flying header. Rodriguez's snap-around volley. Gotze's game winning chest trap and flying kick. Amazing shots taken from practically midfield. Darters that bounced off the crossbar and in that no goalie could hope to stop. Amazing saves by Tim Howard, Ochoe, and Neuer's splendid runs and clears outside the box. Rooney's cross and Sturridge's volley in against Italy. All the defenders who went to their goalie's aid and saved goal-scoring shots off the line with their own two feet.
I've never seen so many great soccer plays condensed into a single month. This was soccer at the apogee of its potential, bringing out the best mankind has to offer. Soccer is the only sport the whole world plays, and as a result the World Cup is the most spectacular and exciting sporting event in the world. The Olympics, composed mostly of niche, throwaway sports no one cares about like luge, with particular terrain requirements, expensive equipment and coaching requirements, or both, can never truly bring the whole world together. But soccer, which just requires a ball and some flat ground, somewhere, anywhere, which can even be played barefoot, is a place where merit can definitively and always rise to the top. Soccer results tell us more about physical and mental prowess than any other game. And at the top of the soccer world soars the German eagle. Is there really any surprise?
No comments:
Post a Comment