ARTS & WEEKEND If there was an air of disappointment at the end, it was more because of what the tournament had promised than anything objective. As the group stages set up a last eight rammed with the game’s grandees, this had the potential to be a great World Cup, but it never quite delivered.
Italy’s semi-final victory over Germany was the best game of the tournament, and far superior to anything in Japan or South Korea four years ago. Yet, for drama, it was not in the same league as the two teams’ meeting at the same stage 36 years ago, when Franz Beckenbauer played on with his arm in a sling and Italy won 4-3.
And that was the story of this World Cup – there was much good football, from a technical and tactical point of view, but little in the way of excitement. There were fewer goals in the knockout stage, indeed, than in Italia 1990, in which negative play alarmed Fifa sufficiently for it to enact various rule changes. Had it not been for the red mist that enveloped the 34-year-old Zinedine Zidane in the final, it would have been tempting to speak of this as a tournament of quiet maturity – particularly as Italy were the oldest winning team for 44 years and the competition was one in which the old powers of Europe struck back.
This one was all about centre-backs and holding midfielders. The players who stood out, at least after the group stages, were not forwards such as Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi, but midfielder Andrea Pirlo and defender Fabio Cannavaro.
Argentina’s performance against Serbia and Montenegro will stand as one of the great attacking displays of all time, and Estaban Cambiasso’s goal one of the great team goals, but they lost their nerve in the quarter-final against Germany, and were knocked out without any of Messi, Juan Román Riquelme, Javier Saviola and Pablo Aimar on the pitch. Spain too, having breezed through a relatively simple group, crumbled when faced with their habitual bêtes noires, France.
Thus the two most attractive sides went home before they had the chance to infect the tournament with their imagination.
Yet they provide hope that the future offers more than five-man midfields and tactical chess, as did the performances of Ivory Coast and Ghana, both of whom played with great verve and energy, and were both ultimately let down by a combination of tough draws and a lack of composure in the final third.
This World Cup was also let down badly by Brazil. There will always be a feeling of dissatisfaction when their jogo is not bonito, even if they did score 10 goals in their first four games. The occasional brilliance of their forwards could not hide the disjointedness elsewhere. Brazil perhaps indicated that football should not be measured merely in goals; but this tournament suggested that excitement probably is.
