Well, that was one hell of a month, wasn’t it?\u00a0 The consensus in the sporting press is that this was the best World Cup in recent memory, and it’s hard to argue otherwise.\u00a0 We saw plenty of goals, one or two overacheiving underdogs, mercifully few officiating fiascoes and, at the end of the day, the best team won it all.\u00a0 Can’t ask for much more than that, right?<\/p>\n
Yesterday’s\u00a0match never really rose to the level of\u00a0greatness, but it was still a fitting enough final act for this drama.\u00a0 The fact that the contest wasn’t more entertaining is really a testament to Argentina’s tactics.\u00a0 For the most part, they kept Germany bottled up, and they were able to create a handful of very good chances for themselves, chances that you’d have expected them to convert if their attackers had\u00a0been playing\u00a0on their club teams.\u00a0 How many times have we seen Lionel Messi score for Barcelona on exactly the same left-footed shot that he sent fizzing just beyond Manuel Neuer’s far post\u00a0at the\u00a0beginning\u00a0of the second half?\u00a0 And would Gonzalo Higuain have failed to hit the target after latching on to Tony Kroos’\u00a0wayward header\u00a0if\u00a0he’d been wearing a Real Madrid shirt?\u00a0 For as much as these guys are used to playing on a big stage, carrying the weight of your country’s expectations with the entire world watching is a whole different level of pressure.<\/p>\n
Argentina got their game plan right, executed it very well, and still lost.\u00a0 Cruel, maybe, but that’s how fine the margins are at this level.\u00a0 By failing to\u00a0capitalize on\u00a0their earlier chances,\u00a0Argentina left the door open for Germany and, when the time came, Mario Goetze didn’t miss.\u00a0 It was a fine goal, worthy of the occasion, and Germany\u00a0were deserving winners.\u00a0 They’ve been the best team throughout the tournament, having conceded only four goals in seven games while scoring more than anybody else (aided, obviously, but the seven that they\u00a0put past hapless Brazil).\u00a0\u00a0Along the way, they came\u00a0through a very difficult group without breaking a sweat, neutralized a French attack that had been in very good form, demolished the hosts and then defeated the best player in the world.\u00a0 Their only “stumble” along the way was needing extra time to get past Algeria, but even that somehow felt convincing by the end.<\/p>\n
The German team was packed with standout performers.\u00a0 In a tournament marked by some very good goalkeeping, Maunuel Neuer enhanced his claim on the title of the world’s best; Miloslav Klose broke Ronaldo’s record for World Cup goals, a record which Thomas Muller may\u00a0in turn eclipse (sooner than later at the rate he’s going); Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Khedira, Lahm, Boateng… all of them were excellent.\u00a0 Klose and Lahm\u00a0were the only\u00a0starters over the age of 30, so expect to\u00a0see a alot\u00a0of these same faces defending their title in Russia in 2018.<\/p>\n
Now that it’s all over, it’s time to take one last look at my predictions (actual results follow in parenthesis, correctly-predicted winners in bold):<\/p>\n
Third-Place Game:\u00a0\u00a0 Netherlands 1-0 over Brazil (Netherlands<\/strong> won 3-0) I got to off to a bit of a mediocre start in terms of prognostication,\u00a0correctly predicting\u00a0only nine of the sixteen teams that advanced beyond the group stage.\u00a0 After that, though, I did much better – of the sixteen games played in the knockout rounds, I correctly called the winner in fifteen of them (France\/Nigeria in the Round of 16 was the one I missed).\u00a0 I suspect a lot of people will have\u00a0had similar success, as the big teams generally performed as expected.\u00a0 I also suspect that, in the future, these things are going to get more difficult to predict.\u00a0 For me, one of the biggest takeaways from Brazil is that the “smaller” teams are getting better.\u00a0 I’m not suggesting that a team like Costa Rica (or the United States) is ready to win the World Cup any time soon, but I think that teams like this will start to take bigger scalps with more regularity, and they’ll do it not by being utterly negative and grabbing a\u00a0lucky goal, but by continuing to evolve and develop quality players that, on their day, will be capable of actually outplaying anyone in the world.<\/p>\n In broad terms, I see the World Cup changing along the lines\u00a0that the NCAA basketball tournament has.\u00a0 If you think back to the 1980’s or early 1990’s, picking brackets was a much easier exercise than it is today.\u00a0 Really big upsets were a rarity, and you could at least navigate the early rounds with some degree of confidence.\u00a0 Now, parity has\u00a0taken over.\u00a0 Smaller conference teams are much, much better than what they were\u00a025 years ago, and\u00a0most teams that make the field\u00a0are\u00a0capable of playing with anybody.\u00a0 I’m sure that has something to do with the\u00a0big-time teams\u00a0no longer keeping players for four years, but it’s pretty clear that the smaller teams are also getting better players than they used to.\u00a0 Scouting, recruiting and\u00a0coaching have all improved to the point that we’ve managed to enlarge the pool of quality players.\u00a0 There are simply more to go around now than there were in 1986.<\/p>\n Gradually, I think the same thing is happening in soccer.\u00a0 The game has become so lucrative that clubs have every incentive to scour the globe for talent, and to develop it once they find it.\u00a0 Communication and travel have developed to the point that it’s unlikely for a quality player to remain undiscovered forever.\u00a0 Combine that with the fact that more players in the U.S. and Asia are finding their way into the game as its popularity continues to grow, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that the talent pool will deepen significantly over the next couple of decades.<\/p>\n Whether all of this will make the World Cup more enjoyable remains to be seen.\u00a0 More parity doesn’t automatically make for a better event; the NCAA basketball tournament was probably more fun back in the ’80’s.\u00a0 Luckily, soccer isn’t basketball, and the parallel I’ve sketched here isn’t meant to\u00a0be exact.\u00a0 I think the\u00a0“name-brand”\u00a0teams will continue to dominate for the foreseeable future – there just\u00a0won’t be as many\u00a0easy games along the way.\u00a0 And that’s perfect – winning this thing should be hard, after all.<\/p>\n So, the World Cup is over, and life goes on.\u00a0 Most of the players are already back in training with their clubs, getting ready for their pre-season tours in July and gearing up for the start of their seasons in August.\u00a0 Liverpool sold Luis Suarez to Barcelona\u00a0for \u00a364 million, so\u00a0good luck to him (and to\u00a0his opponents in the Spanish league who would like to get through the season without being bitten).\u00a0\u00a0 I’ll miss\u00a0blogging about all of this stuff, but it’s time,\u00a0I think, to steer this blog back toward the purpose for which it was intended.\u00a0 Look for a renewed focus on my writing in the weeks to come (unless, of course, something else distracts me).\u00a0 Thanks for bearing with me and I hope you enjoyed the World Cup!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, that was one hell of a month, wasn’t it? The consensus in the sporting press is that this was the best World Cup in recent memory, and it’s hard to argue otherwise. We saw plenty of goals, one or two overacheiving underdogs, mercifully few officiating fiascoes and, at the end of the day, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-cup-2014"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nFinal:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Germany 1-0 over\u00a0Argentia (Germany <\/strong>won 1-0 after extra time)<\/p>\n