Now that the dust has settled in more ways than one on the South African ‘edition’ of the football World Cup, time for a few reflections of my own. The best team with the best individuals won. England deserved their last-16 exit, though the Germans can never carp about 1966 again. It was good to see former power Uruguay reacquire some of their former lustre though did so at the unfortunate expense of Ghana in controversial circumstances. Aside from the group stage implosions of France and Italy, that was it really for this World Cup. The staging was magnificent - it was the teams that turned up that did not perform to their billing.
South Africa’s first-round exit was disappointing but some time or another the host nation would have suffered that fate, it’s just that Carlos Alberto Parreira now has hung round his neck a World Cup winner’s medal as coach and the embarassment of being in charge of the first host nation eliminated in the group stages. As after Belgium in the European Championships of 2000, all subsequent hosts can breathe easy without fear of being lumbered with that tag.
I fancied the Dutch against the Brazilians, reasoning that one year the former must come good and they came closer here than in the previous two finals in 1974 and 1978. Maybe the Dutch prospered in a common kinship with the Afrikaaners, but it is more like that their workmanlike style that was so unattractive was also very effective in undoing more flamboyant opponents.
Then the final. Horrendous unless one rocked up expecting to watch some sort of Ultimate Fight contest. I was glad that an English referee and his assistants made the final but I will happily endorse some of the excoriation that followed, feeling north-eastern clubs suffer from the biased decisions of this Yorkshireman. Howard Webb is on record as saying “it doesn’t matter when you make the decision, just so long as it is the right decision.” He kept on Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong, when definitely one and probably both should have been sent off in the first half. These were instances of trying to keep player numbers equal in the ‘interests of the game’ where the decision was wrong on all counts, but made because it was early in the game. Given how quickly the Dutch defensive dyke was breached once one of their members in Jonny Heitinga finally received marching orders, Webb made a rod for his own back by sparing the street-fighting de Jong and van Bommel. It would have been a better, if one-sided, game had the Spanish had a man advantage for longer. As it was, the intensity of the game was the only interest to be scraped from it. I was fist-pumping when Iniesta scored that late, late goal. By that time, any sympathy for the Dutch at being runners-up again had evaporated, despite Van Persie’s Corinthian spirit in sending a corner straight back to the goalkeeper when it would not have been unchivalrous to have played it normally. Now Spain keep England company as having the worst tournament record of all the World Cup Winners (whereas the Dutch would have surpassed us). Another reason to celebrate.
So the World Cup that seemed at times more dedicated to searching out the best tattoo than the best team is over for four years. With the next one in Brazil, as the host nation seek to end the hex of the hexa and wipe memories of the 1950 ‘Hiroshima’ (inexplicable Brazilian term for that World Cup), England’s search to get their hands on the trophy will last more than four years. We’d better hope that we land the tournament in 2018 or we’ll have no chance of winning it for decades.