I was rooting for Germany, so I’m happy, but, Messi, come on, man. I was riveted to the edge of my seat while he was setting up for that free kick. I was having visions of World Cup memories etched in history. Time was standing still as the camera trained on him time again, a vision of concentration and professionalism.
Thirty feet over the goal (generously estimated)? Jesus Christ, man. What’s a brother got to do for a little pathos … I mean besides a winning goal in the 113th minute.
I disagree about Neuer, because that is to say that the best goalkeeper of the tournament can only play behind a crappy defence and be forced into making strings of saves before his team crash out relatively early on (if your goalkeeper is exposed, no matter how good shot-stopper they are, you’re going to be caught out sooner rather than later). In reality the best goalkeepers usually play for the best teams and they have rarer talents in addition to being fantastic shot-stoppers.
Jeez, I feel terrible for Messi. It’s not that he lost - that’s in the job description - but the cameras seem determined to catch “the failed legend.” :rolleyes:
Navas should have won Golden Gloves. As for Golden Ball, no doubt it was Messi’s. He is the reason the Argentines got this far. All the talk of him being shut out in the last two games, miscues the fact that both the Dutch and the Germans had to play two or three markers on him, which shut out their own scoring opportunities.
Overall, the best team won. As has been the case usually
at these tournaments except the 2006 travesty,
Messi still has a few years and another tournament in him.
What’s your formula for success? I mean it’s obvious that the BBC’s Gary Lineker (WC Golden Boot winner), Alan Hansen (three European Cup Winners medals), Alan Shearer (260 goals in 441 Premier League games) and Rio Ferdinand (6 Premier League medals and one Champions League) know nothing about the game. Is your solution to stand outside and shout at the clouds?
How’s their success in developing players or coaching?
I have no idea on what the formula for success is. Then again I believe neither do Lineker, Hansen etc. . We’ve been hearing this sort of stuff for decades from pundits, what they are saying is nothing new. If successful formulas were so easy to replicate they would have been copied and implemented years ago. Im convinced 9 out of 10 pundits/commentators/coaching officials are barely worth listening to when it comes to successful coaching, tactics or youth structures. It is the 1out of 10 that are worth listening to. The thing is it takes someone far cleverer than me to tell just who the 1 out of 10 are. If it were so easy every club would be producing great talented players. The amount of resources and “expertise” going into youth coaching in this country is substantial.
There is little correlation imo between successful players and these players having effective answers to our lack of footballing success.
Messi wasn’t even the best player on his own team in the tournament.
Got to agree with that, he went AWOL when it mattered and failed to impress against the best teams. Unless he can keep his form into his thirties he’ll go down as a nearly man in terms of the world cup. It isn’t that he hasn’t won it, more that he just hasn’t done enough in the games that he’s played. Similar to Ronaldo.
Mascherano on the other hand just got better and better. The man was immense, sore arse and all.
Germany worthy winners overall (I picked them well before the tournament…did I mention that?) and such a glorious goal to win it with, he had so little time to bring it under control and get the shot off.
They know all about football when it comes to the system that nurtured them. The same system that has failed to develop a challenging team for nearly 50 years.
I hear nothing from them that suggests they are capable of thinking radically about what is needed. Their status as good, if limited, footballers and thinkers doesn’t give them any great insight into what is needed. They are part of the problem, not the solution.
You might not have to wait that long if the so-called Pan-American tournament happens in the United States in 2016.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copa_Am%C3%A9rica_Centenario
It used to be referred to as a “proposed” tournament, but now it’s apparently being referred to as “a scheduled tournament,” so it looks like it will take place.
It’ll consist of all ten South American teams plus the United States, Mexico, and four other squads from the northern hemisphere. It’s probably going to be a one-off thing, in celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the South American confederation. As much as it’s not feasible to combine the northern and southern confederations, I personally wouldn’t mind seeing this tournament happen every four years myself (complete with qualifying, like UEFA has for its regional tournament).
This is kinda what I was trying to say. They are good for rent-a-quotes. I dont think they do much other than repeat stuff ad nauseam about “developing youngsters” or “lets copy the continental coaching system”. Im probably being unfair on these particular pundits. After all they are only repating the type of quote generation after generation of pundits have come away with. The Des Lynam generation of pundit were saying the exact same things. I suspect we’ll hear the same stuff in another 20 years time.
I don’t think there is a formula for success, at least in international football. A strong domestic league where home-grown players can flourish probably helps, but lets face it, there’s not many countries won the World Cup. It’s a bit of a pass-the-parcel among Germany, Brazil, Italy and Argentina, and that’s being generous towards Argentina.
Well, I’m drunk outta my mind, but this was a deserved win by a team which was consistently good in the whole tournament. We just were the best squad, and we deserved to win, we were always the better team this evening.
Thrilled that Germany won, but I’m unbelievably happy for Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm in particular. They’ve been the backbone of both club and country for years and gone through so much heartbreak, getting so close and then just falling short in often horrific fashion. The club-level heartbreaks were avenged last year with the CL Final, but Lahm turns 31 in November and Schweinsteiger will be 30 in a couple weeks and this was their last chance at a World Cup trophy. And they did it. They finally did it. Can’t think of two more deserving players.
Perhaps, but I dont think the French League was particularly strong when the French were winning all their international glory. If there is one thing that is frustrating it is the lack of British players playing abroad. If British players are struggling to get a game in the Premiership there are plenty of other competative leagues abroad. Either our players dont wish to go, foreign managers dont rate our players or perhaps more worryingly our players are happy being bit part squad members on superior money in England rather than on inferior first team money abroad. If that is the case a too financially successful league may be a hindrance. A hindrance that is long term and almost no amount of great youth coaching will alter.
I am being a bit Devil’s Advocate in all this. Im simply fed up with the easy option of saying “let us copy some temporarily successful foreign system”.
Schweinsteiger got a particularly large hug from Angela Merkel at the prize-giving, I thought. And quite right too, he’s going to have a sore face when he wakes up on Tuesday,
CBC Sports in Canada put together a nice montage of highlights from the World Cup. Check it out: - YouTube
Those aren’t highlights, that’s a collage of bullshit cliches with a tiny amount of actual play added because if it’s only cliche, you get a cliche singularity and the CBC bullshit generator collapses in on itself. Seriously, almost the entire fucking video is in slow motion, 80 per cent of it is closeups of people experiencing emotions, 19 per cent is footage of a butterfly, and the rest is football. To be fair, the video gets a little better about 1:30 in, but then it goes back to some sort of Koyaaniskatsi take on the World Cup. Honestly, if I never have to watch football on CBC again it will be too soon.
Does anyone have a link to a good video of that last goal? I want to watch it a few times 