The battle for second place on this
season’s AFL ladder was played out on Saturday night in front of a crowd of
seventy-two thousand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The result, at least from
the perspective of your humble correspondent, was disappointing; the match,
however, was another exhibition of the high standard of football which has been
played this season, and set the scene for the likely second leg of this
encounter in the first week of the finals.
It all started so well for the Cats. After
a three-goal first quarter, they led by six points at the first break. Hawthorn
equalised in the fifth minute of the second term and kept having numbers at the
back, but what followed was a purple patch for Geelong. First Tom Hawkins
outran Brian Lake, then Jimmy Bartel converted a free kick, then Hawkins again
won a duel with Lake and executed a Gaelic-style set-shot snap. Two more goals
followed and Geelong led by thirty-one at the half. When the boy from Finley
marked in the goal square early in the third quarter, the Pivotonians went
thirty-three up.
To this point, the match had been played at
a staccato rhythm. Geelong’s early lead was countered by Hawthorn, and
Geelong’s second break from the pack was chased down by the brown and gold peloton. A turnover led to a
length-of-the-field play resulting in David Hale’s first goal of the night;
three more followed in quick succession to narrow the margin to nine points.
Sam Mitchell thought he’d taken it down to three when he converted a set shot
from the fifty metre arc, but an indecisive score review ensured that the goal
umpire’s original ruling that the kick had been touched on the line would stand.
Hawthorn made amends straight away through
Hale, and Will Langford’s post-siren goal put the Mayblooms ahead at lemon
time, 9.7.61 to 9.3.57. When the teams returned for the final quarter, it
really started to All Go Pete Tong for i
biancoblu. Four Hawthorn goals were answered only by a Geelong behind, and
the margin ballooned out to twenty-eight points. The way Geelong were being
outclassed tactically brought back memories of the 110-point loss to the Swans,
as they struggled to get the ball out of defence and punted it skyward to
no-one in particular on the occasions that they did.
Midway through the final term, the pendulum
began to swing back. Geelong kept winning the ball out of the centre, and two
late goals sparked hopes of a comeback. But it was never really on, and Brad
Sewell made sure of it by booting the final goal. Hawthorn triumphed by
twenty-three points in the end, but what did they win? Four premiership points,
another nail into the coffin of the so-called ‘Kennett Curse’, and the right to
wear their oh-so-haute couture brown
shorts by dint of being the ‘home’ team in the qualifying final. See you again
in a fortnight, Hawks.
One suspected before the tournament that a
man named Mario might be the decisive factor in the later stages – it just
turned out that his surname wasn’t Balotelli.
With Sami Khedira injuring his calf during
the warm-up, Christoph Kramer fitted into the German starting eleven for the
third meeting between the two nations in a World Cup final. The early signs
were that it was going to be a repeat of 1986 rather than 1990, as Gonzalo
Higuaín missed on twenty minutes before having his goal on the half hour, the
result of a Lionel Messi pass and an Ezequiel Lavezzi cross, correctly
disallowed. It kept getting worse for Die
Mannschaft: bookings for Bastian Schweinsteiger and Benedikt Höwedes, and a
forced substitution before the break as an injured Kramer was replaced by André
Schürrle.
Furthermore, no matter how many defenders
they had swarming around Messi, the little master still managed to find space.
In the thirty-fifth minute, he reminded us of his brilliance when he
wrong-footed two Germans, only for a third to be forced into booting the ball
away for a corner. It was two minutes after that when the tide started to turn.
Schürrle forced a save from the Argentine goalkeeper, Mesut Özil managing to
make himself useful for once by ducking out of the way. The next chance was a
cross from Thomas Müller which curved the wrong way for Miroslav Klose, and the
first half ended with a flurry of German corners, one of which was headed into
the post by a rampaging Höwedes.
And so ended a half in which there was
nothing to separate the two sides. When they returned, Lavezzi – presumably
injured – had been replaced by Sergio Agüero and Messi was again a threat in
front of goal, finding space behind the German defence and shooting
uncharacteristically wide in the forty-seventh minute. The match soon settled
into its familiar rhythm: the three-time champions controlling possession (they
had sixty-three percent of it, coupled with Barcelona-esque passing and pass
accuracy statistics) but playing reactively rather than proactively, la albiceleste dominating the midfield
and challenging for the ball high up the pitch.
The hype about 1986 versus 1990 gave way to
comparisons with 1982 just before the hour mark, when Manuel Neuer battled with
Higuaín for a high ball just outside the penalty area; the connection of the
German keeper’s knee with the Argentine forward’s head bringing back memories
of Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battiston in that year’s semi-final. It was the
South Americans, however, who would ramp up the physicality. Javier Mascherano
and Agüero were cautioned in consecutive minutes for challenges on Klose and
Schweinsteiger respectively, while Lucas Biglia got away with seemingly worse
aggressions against Philipp Lahm. There would be little more to the match until
the end of regulation time, only a few substitutions, the most noteworthy being
Higuaín’s removal in the seventy-eighth minute and Klose’s farewell to the
tournament of which he is now the all-time greatest scorer.
For the seventh time in nineteen World Cup
finals, extra time was required. Both teams traded chances early on, and
substitute Fernando Gago had another in the ninety-seventh minute but failed to
steer a bouncing cross under the bar. Agüero was lucky not to be sent off when
his fist connected with Schweinsteiger’s face early in the second overtime
period; the German needed to be treated for the resulting bleeding, but
returned to spend more time lying on the turf.
But just like at Wembley in 1996,
when a substitute won it in extra time for post-unification Germany’s first
European Championship, so it would be for the Berlin Republic’s first world
title. After a powerful run along the left flank from Schürrle was crossed into
the box, Mario Götze, brought on for the aging Klose in the eighty-eighth
minute, volleyed the ball into the top right-hand corner of the net after
coolly chesting it onto his feet.
That, of course, wasn’t the end of it.
There were four minutes of injury time, thanks firstly to Joachim Löw taking
off Özil in the one hundred and twentieth minute to give Per Mertesacker some
time on the pitch, and secondly to Bastian Schweinsteiger writhing around in
agony after an injury time challenge on Messi. With a free kick awarded and the
seconds ticking down, the man who would be named player of the tournament a few
minutes later opted to roll the dice, but his effort from twenty-five metres
out sailed over the bar without bothering Neuer.
Cue scenes of jubilation from the German
camp, and from Angela Merkel, whose undignified barracking – so unfortunately
typical of the modern politician – has marred what was otherwise a marvellous
campaign. This victory was the first in nine attempts by a European nation in a
World Cup staged in the Americas – combined with Spain’s win in South Africa
and the increasing irrelevance
of the away goals rule in European club competitions, perhaps a sign that
geography is no longer destiny at this level of the game.
The last few World Cups prior to this one
had been, quite frankly, rubbish. Perhaps the last good World Cup was France
’98; certainly no great ones had been staged from Italia ’90 onwards. 2002 was
marred by biased refereeing; 2006 and 2010 continued the post-1990 trend of low
goals-per-game tallies, stifling commercialisation, and players unable to
perform at their peak after tiring club seasons. With modern schedules and
playing conditions, there can probably never be another tournament quite like,
say, España ‘82.
But Brazil put on the best World Cup
possible under the circumstances. Unfancied teams, such as Algeria, Ghana,
Costa Rica, and Australia, resisted the temptation to park the bus in front of
goal and produced exciting, attacking play. The goals per game average was
2.67, equal to France ’98, and up from 2.3 in 2006 and 2.27 in 2010 (since
stabilising below three in 1962, the figure has fluctuated
between a high of 2.21 in 1990 and a low of 2.97 in 1970). Matches were played
in a variety of weather conditions, from the driving rain of the
Mexico-Cameroon group stage clash in Natal to the oppressive Fortaleza heat
which turned the Netherlands-Mexico knockout match into a game of four quarters.
Even the controversies were fun: the drones spying on French training sessions,
Pepe’s meltdown, the laser being shone in the Russian goalkeeper’s eyes, Zúñiga’s
tackle, and the FIFA associate fleeing Rio and Interpol via a side door in his
hotel.
And best of all, the tournament wasn’t
dominated by the same big-name players we see every week in the big European
leagues. Rooney, Xavi, Balotelli, and Özil underwhelmed, Suárez positively
disgraced himself, and Belgium’s star-studded line-up did little to justify its
pre-tournament ‘dark horse’ tag. Instead, the limelight was stolen by the likes
of Ligue 1 star James Rodríguez, Mexico’s clubless goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa,
and Dutchman Wesley Sneijder, written off as an irrelevance after transferring
from Internazionale to Galatasaray. Perhaps the only things which could have
made this World Cup even better would have been a Brazilian triumph, and the
sight of Didier Drogba steering Les
Éléphants to the promised land of the knockout stages.
Germany 1 (Mario Götze 113’) – Argentina 0 (a.e.t.)
It was set to be their biggest test of the
tournament so far, but the nerves of the host nation were calmed in the seventh
minute, when a Neymar corner found Thiago Silva amongst a pack of players, the
captain shinboning the ball into the back of the net. Although it had been
billed as the clash of the two number tens – Neymar and James Rodríguez – it
was David Luiz who was Brazil’s standout player. The Paris Saint-Germain
centre-back had set up the first goal, fired up the crowd, inspired his team
with his attacking runs, and it was no surprise that he would be the man to
score Brazil’s second.
More surprising, however, was the manner in
which it was scored. In the sixty-seventh minute, James was cautioned for
tripping Hulk approximately twenty-five metres from goal. A few yellow shirts (los cafeteros being forced by the colour
clash to play in a hauntingly Chile-esque red and blue) milled about the ball,
but there was no pretence about who was going to take it. David Luiz fired
straight into the top right-hand corner to score one of the all-time great
set-piece World Cup goals. He topped it off with the kung-fu kick to the corner
flag celebration pioneered by Dutchman Memphis Depay. At this point, the
Estádio Castelão was in no doubt: a
seleção was into the semi-finals.
But the home crowd were given a scare late
in the match. With thirteen minutes of regulation time left on the clock,
goalkeeper Júlio César hacked down substitute forward Carlos Bacca, with whom
he was one-on-one in the box. The keeper was cautioned for his troubles, and
James converted the ensuing penalty to give los
cafeteros hope of a late comeback, and himself his sixth goal in what was a
stellar freshman tournament. Although Colombia had thought they had equalised
one minute before David Luiz’s goal, only for it to be disallowed for offside,
they were unable to repeat the feat in the final stretch, and the home side
booked their place in the semi-final at Belo Horizonte against the team they
vanquished in the 2002 decider, Germany.
There were a few low points along the way for
the Brazilians. Thiago Silva received his second yellow card of the tournament
for charging down the Colombian goalkeeper midway through the second half; he
will miss the semi-final, which presumably will allow Dani Alves to be slotted
into the defence. The sight of Neymar being stretchered off in the
eighty-eighth minute will no doubt send the nation into a collective panic over
the next few days, but this match proved that o verde-amarelo can win without him playing at his best.
It may be that this was the match that
decided the World Cup – Brazil can win this thing, and so could have Colombia.
There was a powerful moment after the final whistle when David Luiz and James
Rodríguez swapped shirts and embraced like gladiators.
One will go forth to a semi-final showdown with Germany; the other has already spearheaded
his nation to its greatest ever finish and erased the ghosts of 1994.
Brazil 2 (Thiago Silva 7’;
David Luiz 69’) – Colombia 1 (James Rodríguez 80’ pen.)
Cautions: Thiago Silva (Braz.) 64’; James
Rodríguez (Colo.) 67’; Mario Yepes (Colo.) 71’; Júlio César (Braz.) 78’
One could have been forgiven for thinking
that this was something more than a soccer match, with all the pre-match
references to the 1940 And All That. What transpired was indeed a German victory,
but the French were no cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
The Maracanã, sweltering in ninety percent
humidity, witnessed ninety minutes of German possession against French
counter-attacking, with the appropriate level of physicality from both sides,
but it still somehow felt as if les bleus
wouldn’t be able to equalise after Die
Mannschaft went ahead in the thirteenth minute.
That first goal was headed in from a
swirling Toni Kroos free kick which found Mats Hummels in a crowded penalty
area. The Germans had most of the chances on goal in the first half, and some
skulduggery in front of the goal by the French defenders meant that they were
unlucky to have two penalty appeals turned down. The three-time world champions
went into the sheds with fifty-five percent of the possession and twice as many
completed passes, a reminder to the influence of Pep Guardiola’s Bayern München
on this squad.
The fact that France were denied what
looked like a rightful penalty soon after the break, along with the fact that
only two yellow cards were brandished during the match, led one to think that
the Argentine referee had left his whistle at home. Bastian Schweinsteiger
certainly earned his caution, given for a spate of persistent fouling which
included a shoulder charge on Mathieu Valbuena. As cariocas were also treated to some lovely tit-for-tat argy-bargy
midway through the second period involving Thomas Müller and Patrice Evra. The
other intriguing battle was the contest between the two sweeper-keepers (or
should that be keeper-sweepers?), Hugo Lloris and Manuel Neuer. (Manuel playing
for the Germans? ¿Que?)
Les
bleus threw everything at the German goal: Benzema,
Griezmann, Valbuena, Matuidi, and even the subbed-on Olivier Giroud.
Ultimately, they were unable to break through a German defence which was at its
best defending against corners. It was a well-deserved victory, and Germany
will be difficult to beat in Belo Horizonte.
France 0 – Germany 1 (Mats Hummels 13’)
Cautions: Sami Khedira (Ger.) 54’; Bastian
Schweinsteiger (Ger.) 80’
Sixty-four years ago, Uruguay pulled off
one of the greatest triumphs in the history of sport when they knocked off a
cocky Brazilian outfit who had already composed a celebratory samba. The venue,
the Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro (then the national capital, now
merely the chef-lieu of the eponymous
state) would thus be an appropriate place for the serving-up of a second dose
of poetic justice.
Colombia’s two goals came from a familiar
source: James Rodríguez. The Monaco man has been one of the revelations of the
tournament, and the prospect of a quarter-final battle between he and Neymar is
positively mouth-watering. The first goal, in the twenty-eighth minute, came
from outside the box and seemingly out of nowhere. Surrounded on four sides by
sky blue shirts, he received Abel Aguilar’s header on his chest and twisted around
to volley the ball in off the underside of the bar. The second, five minutes
after the break, was a product of his fruitful combination with Juan Guillermo
Cuadrado, as Cuadrado headed a Pablo Armero cross down to James’ boot for his
fifth of the tournament. Both were, naturally, followed by those celebratory
dances along the goal line which have helped to make los cafeteros one of the most enjoyable teams to watch in Brazil.
It wasn’t all one-way traffic. Around the
half-hour mark, Colombia were saved by some brilliant Carlos Sánchez defending
and by Edinson Cavani misfiring a free kick over the bar. The statistical
indicators of Colombia’s dominance – a 64-36 possession count and a 5-1 lead in
shots on target at half-time – were worn down by the end of the match as la celeste had a much better second
half. A missile from Cristian Rodríguez was saved just after the hour, while an
Edinson Cavani shot had the same result six minutes from the end of normal time.
But this match was all about Luis Suárez; the
Uruguayan players posed with his shirt in the dressing room before the match as
their feral supporters chanted his name. It takes a sick country to rally
behind a knuckle-dragging sub-human thug who has bitten three opposition
players in four years, and an even sicker country to make excuses for his
actions and to blame it on some imagined conspiracy. This is why it was so
great to see la celeste lose.
Uruguay, it seems, combines the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality of the small
country surrounded by larger and better neighbours, and the sense of
entitlement that comes from being white in a multi-racial region of the world.
For them to lose to a team who play beautiful soccer and who contain so many
members of the black race that Suárez hates was thus an appropriate outcome, a
modern-day maracanazo. ¡Fuerza Colombia!
Colombia 2 (James Rodríguez
28’, 50’) – Uruguay
0
Cautions: José María Giménez (Uru.) 55’; Diego
Lugano (Uru.) 77’; Pablo Armero (Colo.) 78’
Every Napoleon, a wise man once said, has
his Watergate. (I think he meant to say Waterloo.) The great Spanish team which
won Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup, and Euro 2012 has met its Waterloo in
Brazil. Like the Victorian-era Scots with their Combination Game, the Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s, the Hungarian Aranycsapat of the 1950s, and the Dutch
pioneers of totaalvoetbal, Spain
wowed the world with its tiki-taka
before everyone else worked out how to beat it. After 5-1 and 2-0 defeats to
the Netherlands and Chile respectively, the Spaniards have been made to look
like a band whose old stuff is so much better than their new stuff. In their
final group match, they faced a Socceroos outfit who had pushed the Chileans
and the Dutch all the way, and who hoped to leave Brazil with the scalp of the
reigning champions, something which looked possible even in the absence of the
suspended Tim Cahill.
The venue for this dead rubber was the
Estádio Joaquim Américo Guimarães, more commonly known as the Arena da Baixada,
located in Curitiba, capital of the southern state of Paraná. There had been
controversy in the lead-up to match about the state of the pitch; in fact, it
was in such a poor condition that your humble correspondent’s first thoughts
were that Ange Postecoglou had erred by not picking Shane Warne in the starting
eleven, such was its resemblance to a dusty spin-friendly wicket on the
Subcontinent.
The Spaniards, looking very haute couture in their black away
strips, had a few chances in the opening half-hour before the Melbourne Heart-
City-bound David Villa backheeled a pass from Juanfran to put them 1-0 up in
the thirty-sixth minute. The Socceroos, not looking as if they were missing
Cahill, had a few chances of their own and had obtained forty-three percent of
the possession by the break (this figure hit forty-five late in the match, a
telling statistic against the masters of tiki-taka).
Villa was taken off eleven minutes into the
second half to allow Juan Mata his first spell on the pitch of the tournament;
the Manchester United man would get his name on the scoresheet, but first it
was Fernando Torres’ turn. In the sixty-ninth minute, Andrés Iniesta broke
through the Australian defence to find Torres, who coolly slotted it home. Mata
made it 3-0 thirteen minutes later when, unmarked, he got on the end of a Cesc
Fàbregas cross and banged it through Mat Ryan’s legs. By the end, it felt that
the Socceroos’ defence was being too easily breached, but this shouldn’t
detract from the fact that they got out of this group with a goal difference of
minus six; a phenomenal improvement on their late-2013 form, which saw them
lose two consecutive friendlies to Brazil and France 6-0.
As far as Socceroo World Cup campaigns go,
it wasn’t 2006, but it wasn’t 1974 or 2010 either. The group table shows three
losses, but this is a team which led the Netherlands for four minutes and which
kept Spain down to fifty-five percent possession. Watch out for the Socceroos
in 2018.
Australia 0 – Spain 3
(David Villa 36’; Fernando Torres 69’; Juan Mata 82’)
With both teams needing a win to propel
themselves into second place in Group F behind Argentina, the first-ever
match-up between Nigeria and Bosnia promised to be an interesting contest,
played beneath the brutalist steel pillars of the Arena Pantanal. From the
first minute the Super Eagles signalled their intention to continue the
tournament’s trend of attacking play. They hit long balls into the box, drew
corners, and fired a seventh-minute free kick around the Bosnian wall and just
wide. When this failed, they sprinted forward on the counter-attack and fired
low from outside the box – and all this in the first quarter of an hour!
‘Goodluck Nigeria’ read a banner in the stands – a tip of the hat to the
country’s fedora-sporting president – but the
men in green weren’t content to rely on luck.
But on twenty minutes, it looked like the
Super Eagles’ luck had run out. A Bosnian through ball was slotted home by Edin
Džeko, only to be incorrectly and belatedly ruled offside by the Kiwi linesman.
The Manchester City forward had another go three minutes later, only to be
denied by the safe hands of goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama. Five minutes after
that, the Super Eagles’ peppering of the Bosnian goal finally paid off as Emmanuel
Emenike passed inside to Peter Odemwingie, who goaled easily to the sound of
Bosnian appeals for a foul against Emenike.
The opening section of the second half was
characterised by zmajevi attempting
to find a way through the mass of green shirts in the box. By this stage, they
had gained fifty-eight percent of the possession though the two sides had made
an equal amount of shots at goal. With the sweat making the players’ shirts
cling to their bodies in the mato-grossense
heat, Bosnian manager Safet Sušić was first with the tactical substitutions,
making all three allowable changes either side of the hour mark. Stephen Keshi
followed his lead, bringing on Newcastle United attacker Shola Ameobi soon afterwards.
The last half-hour was played at a much
slower tempo than had hitherto been the case, as a frustrated Bosnia attacked
and a tired Nigeria (with the exception of Emenike, who carried on like an
Energizer bunny) half-heartedly counter-attacked. The scoreline stayed at 1-0,
receiving its most serious challenge thirty seconds from time when a shot from
Džeko was deflected by Enyeama onto the post. It was an engaging and
hard-fought match in what is turning out to be the best World Cup of the modern
era. A sad way for Bosnia to go out of their first World Cup as an independent
nation, but your humble correspondent was left with the feeling that we’ll be
seeing a lot more of them at major tournaments in the years to come.
Nigeria 1 (Peter Odemwingie
29’) – Bosnia
and Herzegovina 0
Cautions: Haris Medunjanin (B. & H.) 6’;
John Obi Mikel (Nig.) 81’
