2014 World Cup Roundup
With the World Cup down to its final four, you see fewer fans on the streets here in Brazil. Most of the host cities have closed their stadiums and are starting to remember the problems they had an infinity ago, before the World Cup began. With matches growing scarce, we camp followers are finally catching up on sleep. The tournament is winding down. All that remains is to discover the winner.
But that isn even all important. From the start, the small gold trophy concerned only a few big countries. Most of the participants were competing for other titles, which have already been awarded: We now know the tournament chief clowns, villains and Cinderellas.
Traditionally, the clown is England. The team propensity to fly out amid hype and then step on banana skins is a ritual of the World Cup. The English obliged again this time, getting knocked out just Nike Air Max Mens five days after kicking off. In fact, their whole league trod on a collective banana skin: Scarcely any of the best players of this tournament plays in the Premier League.
Yet the English have to contest the title of chief clown with Spain. To arrive as champions and then lose your opening match 5 1 to a second rate Dutch team is pure slapstick comedy. Luckily, this memory will fade, and what we remember is the most successful team in international football history. As the historian of Italian football John Foot notes, Spain keeper, Iker Casillas, has had a brilliant career. Two dreadful performances against Holland and Chile won change that. Still, for one week of their careers, the Spaniards were clowns.
The tournament kicked off with the two chief villains in the stands. Sepp Blatter, eternal president of FIFA, heads an organization so pompous (besides its other flaws) that its regulations describe him as the Leader. However, he particularly irks European and North American fans. Most Brazilians saw a different chief villain: their president, Dilma Rousseff, scapegoat for the waste, corruption and overspending of Brazil World Cup.
But then the tournament went smoothly and Dilma reputation began to recover. In fact, the World Cup may help her get reelected in October. Instead, a new villain emerged: the Uruguayan biter Luis Suarez. Soon, though, as everybody reflected on his act truly a global topic of conversation it came to seem more bizarre than evil. The bite didn even help Uruguay: Without Nike Air Max 90 Womens Suarez, they were immediately knocked out. His victim, Giorgio Chiellini, forgave him. Suarez morphed from villain to clown.
Last Friday evening in Fortaleza, at the Brazil Colombia game, the most unpleasant match I attended here, yet another villain presented himself: the Spanish referee Carlos Velasco Carballo. Referees in this tournament have followed a new directive: them play or keep interrupting games with free kicks and cards. Velasco Carballo took this policy to its absurd extreme. Brazil was pursuing a classic 1970s strategy: Kick Colombia genius James out of the game. Velasco Carballo them play. James, assaulted constantly by Nike Air Max 2015 Mens Fernandinho, did what any sane person would: He didn go near Brazil goal. Then the Colombian Juan Camilo Z kneed Neymar in the back, very nearly paralyzing him for life, according to the Brazilian team doctor. One referee had eliminated two geniuses in an evening. I left the stadium feeling sick. Yet the Spanish newspaper Marca says FIFA is considering him for the final.
Brazilian TV is now even more bizarre than usual. Half the time you see the same old commercials of Neymar pushing innumerable products. The other half, you see images of Neymar being helicoptered to a hospital; Neymar, trying not to cry, addressing the Brazilian people; Brazilians keeping a vigil outside his clinic, etc. He has become a peculiarly Catholic hero. The savior who sacrificed his body to redeem us.
Lastly, we had Cinderellas galore. Back in April, a young Costa Rican playing in Greece named Joel Campbell was so excited to be in the Panini World Cup sticker album that he went out and bought 100 packs of stickers, hoping (in vain) to find one sticker of himself. He became a star here. So did Mexico keeper, Guillermo Ochoa, and the Belgian teenager Divock Origi, so anonymous when he was picked for the tournament that his teammate Marouane Fellaini hadn heard of him. These men didn come here to win the World Cup. What they got was possibly just as good: an experience to remember forever.
Mauricio Pinilla, the Chilean substitute who hit Brazil crossbar with the scores tied a minute before time, wasn heartbroken. Nike Air Max 2016 Women In fact, he immortalized his moment by getting a tattoo on his back that shows the ball hitting the bar, and the words, in English, centimeter from glory. That closer than most humans get.