Against Nigeria he scored twice—the second from a free kick—in a narrow 3–2 win, prompting Nigeria’s experienced coach Stephen Keshi to say, ‘Messi is from Jupiter. He is different. He is one hell of a player.’
The first elimination game brought Argentina another 1–0 victory, this time over a feisty Switzerland, whose memories of their disastrous 5–2 defeat by France were behind them. Yet again Argentina had the incomparable Messi to thank: just a couple of minutes of extra time were left when he raced into the penalty area to set up Ángel Di María for the breathless winner, after which the Swiss hit the post with Blerim Džemaili’s header. Argentina were still doing it the hard way, this time with a 4–2–3–1 formation.
And it was 1–0 again against Belgium in Brasilia in the quarter-finals, the game decided by their outstanding striker Gonzalo Higuaín after just eight minutes. And Messi? ‘He was our water in the desert,’ said Sabella, flamboyantly. ‘When the terrain was dry, he once again gave us a chance to breathe fresh air.’
But in the semi-final against Holland in São Paulo, there would be no goals at all, and if Argentina had heroes they were the goalkeeper Sergio Romero and the defensive midfielder Javier Mascherano, whose dramatic tackle on the surging Arjen Robben denied Holland a winner almost at the end of normal time. So to penalties, with Argentina prevailing 4–2, and Messi by now predictably running out of steam.
In the Final, in sharp contrast to Brazil’s 7–1 surrender Argentina would give Germany a hard run for their money. Which prompts one to ask whether, despite the 7–1 victory and their ultimately deserved success, Germany were a very good rather than a great team, such as the Brazilian sides which won the World Cup in 1958 and 1970, and even the Hungarians who lost the 1954 Final to a German side now emphatically proved to have been on dope. It’s hard not to wonder what might have happened in the 2014 Final had Messi not have been so palpably tired and well short of his refulgent best.
And what would have happened had Higuaín scored, as he surely should have done, early in the Final, when Toni Kroos carelessly played the ball back and set him free, only for Higuaín to shoot carelessly wide. It makes one wonder whether Sabella may have regretted omitting a striker, even one as formidably recalcitrant as Carlos Tevez, from his squad. Nor could Argentina call on the injured Ángel Di María for the Final, although by the same token, Germany were deprived of the excellent Sami Khedira, injured in the warm-up—ironic indeed when one recalls how swiftly he’d recovered from torn knee ligaments suffered the previous November.
In the European Championship two years earlier, England had made little or nothing of Andrea Pirlo’s insidious passing from midfield, though they had held out before going down on penalties. This time, in Manaus, they again found Pirlo irrepressible and went down 2–1. Before the World Cup draw was made, Roy Hodgson was incautious enough to express what he had every right to think: that he hoped England would not be obliged to play in Manaus, set in the middle of the stiflingly hot Amazon rainforest. And lo, England were quickly condemned by the draw to play precisely there, leaving Hodgson to placate the local hierarchy with penitent apologies. They generously forgave him, but the damage was done, to Italy as well as to England. Since Manaus was a remote outpost of the Brazilian game without a valid team of its own, you did wonder, in that country of engaging charm and endemic corruption, whether deals may have been done. Having beaten England, Italy went on to lose not only to Uruguay but to astonishing little Costa Rica.
Hodgson’s decision to use Wayne Rooney wide on the left against Italy made some sense. That Rooney over the years had been England’s most talented player hardly altered the fact that he had had only one impressive international tournament: the European Championships of 2004, when, had he not been kicked out of the quarter-finals by the Portuguese, England might well have gone on to win the trophy. Portugal had also been his nemesis at the 2006 World Cup, when he was sent off, to Cristiano Ronaldo’s delight, for kicking an opponent. He had been petulant and ineffectual in South Africa in 2010, and in the most recent European Championships he had missed the first two games through suspension, having gratuitously kicked an opponent in Montenegro.
Against Italy in Manaus Rooney missed one of England’s rare decent chances and gave negligible support to his left back, Leighton Baines, who was having a torrid time. Hodgson’s problem was that, with Baines clearly out of his depth, his only alternative was to throw the teenaged Luke Shaw into the fray, the hugely experienced Ashley Cole having been left behind. Rooney, to do him justice, did provide the telling cross from the left which enabled Daniel Sturridge to equalise after Claudio Marchisio had put Italy ahead, but in the fiftieth minute Antonio Candreva, a trial to England, put in the left-wing cross which the England centre-backs failed to prevent Mario Balotelli from heading in.
That same day, in Fortaleza, gallant outsiders Costa Rica came from behind to beat Uruguay 3–1. His fitness in doubt, Suárez was absent from the Uruguay line-up, but Costa Rica themselves were without two of their leading players: striker Álvaro Saborío and wing back Bryan Oviedo, both injured. What they did emphatically have was the quick, alert young Joel Campbell, an attacker who was actually on Arsenal’s books, though he had gone out on loan around Europe. He scored his team’s first goal and his through ball created the third.
In Recife, they then proceeded to beat Italy too, this time through a goal headed in by Bryan Ruiz after he had first hit the bar. A player who had so recently been cast out on loan by Fulham, a team doomed to relegation, he impressed in midfield, while Campbell again shone up front as the sole striker. But Júnior Díaz, whose cross set up the goal, was the hero of the match. Costa Rica’s third game was a meaningless dead-rubber goalless draw with England, while Italy, with Marchisio sent off and Chiellini bitten, succumbed to Uruguay.
Spain, though they would win the World Cup in 2010, actually lost their opening match of that tournament 1–0 to Switzerland, which might have fostered some illusory hope after Robben and the Dutch had thrashed them 5–1 in Salvador. Beforehand Spain’s coach, Vicente del Bosque, had said somewhat plaintively, ‘We are not Talibans with just one way of playing.’ Against Holland there seemed no way at all. Xabi Alonso made no bones about it after Spain’s elimination: ‘We were unable to maintain the conviction and ambition to maintain our title. We have been unable to maintain the hunger. Perhaps our quota of success has come to an end. All cycles come to an end with defeat, and this one has hurt. Physically we were also at the limit and we were unable to control the situations. Our pride is hurt.’
There was some slight consolation in Spain’s 3–0 win over Australia in their third and last game, irrelevant though it was. In Atlético Madrid’s Koke they had found a fine young midfielder, though it was strange to find Del Bosque constantly giving time to Torres, whose salad days were years behind him, even though he scored in this game. Chile beat Spain as well, 2–0, with Alexis Sánchez always influential. He was, however, soon to be jettisoned by Barcelona and picked up by Arsenal.
As for gallant little Costa Rica, they would finish the tournament unbeaten in both ordinary and extra time. The resplendent goalkeeping of Keylor Navas, who had been voted best keeper in the Spanish league, kept Greece at bay in the first knockout round, even though his team went down to ten men when, a good half-hour from the end of normal time, their defender Óscar Duarte was expelled after incurring a second yellow card for a rough challenge. Ruiz, with a curiously unorthodox shot, had put Costa Rica ahead, they should have been given a spot kick when Vasilis Torosidis handled, and it was only in injury time that Sokratis Papastathopoulos equalised, after Navas’s fine save from Theofanis Gekas. Thereafter Navas was unbeatable, and when Gekas took Greece’s fourth penalty, he sprung superbly to his right to parry the ball one-handed. ‘He was the best player,’ said the Greek coach, Fernando Santos, while Navas declared, ‘It is one of the most wonderful things of my whole life.’
Against Holland in the quarter-final, not even a ram
pant Arjen Robben could beat him. Yet again the match went to penalties, with Louis van Gaal sending on his second-choice keeper, Tim Krul, just in time for the spot kicks because ‘He is taller and has a longer reach.’ The gamble paid off where the insertion of an extra attacker had not. Holland scraped through 4–3 on penalties, but the honours were Costa Rica’s.
As for the Germans, they began by overwhelming Portugal 4–0 in Salvador and were already two up when Pepe, never the gentlest of defenders and seemingly furious with Thomas Müller’s reaction to his foul, loomed over the German as he sat on the pitch and butted him with his head, though Müller afterwards believed it was with a fist. Red card. Müller, operating in a 4–4–2 formation, had already scored from a penalty and, seemingly none the worse after Pepe’s assault, would score twice more. It was his fiftieth cap and one still wonders whether, had he not been suspended, Germany might have beaten Spain in the 2010 semifinal. His first goal, against a Portugal team in which Cristiano Ronaldo, seemingly not wholly fit, made scant impact, came from a penalty. The second and third were pieces of crisp opportunism.
This German team would in due course be changed by Joachim Löw, who brought the captain Philipp Lahm back from midfield to his original position at right back, shifting Jérôme Boateng from that position to centre-back at the expense of the highly experienced but somewhat ponderous Per Mertesacker, and, in the sixty-ninth minute of the next game against Ghana, daringly bringing on the now thirty-six-year-old orthodox centre-forward Miroslav Klose, who, two minutes later, scored the equalising goal.
Truth to tell, Germany, in the second and third of their Group G games, hardly looked like eventual winners. Ghana were every bit as good as Germany and, having gone behind to a goal by Mario Götze, responded with two of their own by André Ayew, a header, and Asamoah Gyan. The great Brazilian striker Ronaldo sent a generous message to Klose, who in scoring the equaliser had equalled his World Cup scoring record: ‘Welcome to the club, Klose. I can imagine how happy you are. What a nice World Cup.’ It was all the more generous considering that Ronaldo’s haul, unlike Klose’s, didn’t include a cornucopia against a flaccid Saudi Arabia in the 2002 competition.
Next up for Germany were the United States, in Recife, a mere 1–0 win, with Müller on target again after Tim Howard had repelled Mertesacker’s header. Jürgen Klinsmann’s Americans surpassed themselves against the team he had once managed. After the game he and Löw, a good friend, embraced cordially. A resourceful USA team had already done what Germany couldn’t, beating Ghana 2–1 in Natal, the winner a fierce header by the substitute left back John Brooks from Graham Zusi’s corner. Clint Dempsey, once such a success at Fulham, had opened the scoring after a mere twenty-nine seconds, making him the first American to score in three World Cups. Revenge was sweet after two previous World Cup defeats by Ghana.
The first knockout round saw Germany drawn against Algeria, which elicited bitter memories for the Algerians, who, in the 1982 World Cup in Spain, had good reason to think themselves cheated. Having sensationally beaten West Germany, they then suffered the pain of seeing themselves eased out by a virtual Anschluss between the Germans and Austrians, whereby the Germans scored early on and both teams thereafter all too plainly went through the motions.
In Brazil, under the former Yugoslav centre-forward Vahid Halilhodžic´, Algeria used no fewer than nineteen of their twenty players. Losing to Belgium but inspired against South Korea, they made Germany look rather ordinary as the Germans came through 2–1 in extra time, looking anything but confident and serene. André Schürrle, that incisive substitute, served by Müller, got the first goal with his heel, then set up the second when his shot was cleared off the line, with Özil following up to score. Algeria arguably deserved better than the goal scored by Abdelmoumene Djabou just before the expiry of extra time. This hardly looked like a German team capable of winning the title. Their 4–2–3–1 formation was riskily deployed, the team pushing up so far that the Algerians were constantly able to threaten with balls played over the top that were hotly pursued by their swift attackers. Löw was anything but exuberant. ‘It was a victory of willpower,’ he admitted. ‘We didn’t play well in the first half, we had major problems, but the important thing was that we got through. You cannot always play fantastically.’ Fortunately for Germany, goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, a virtual sweeper, often did.
Next up the French, who had begun so exuberantly, a crushing 5–2 win over the Swiss in Salvador showing they had no need for Samir Nasri, whom manager and former World Cup-winning captain Didier Deschamps had left behind, seemingly because of Nasri’s personality. ‘It was almost absolutely perfect,’ Deschamps exclaimed after the game. Real Madrid’s Karim Benzema, though he missed a penalty, led the attack with brio, scoring once and having a second disallowed just as the final whistle blew. France dominated for eighty minutes and the two late Swiss goals were hardly relevant. France’s 4–3–3 formation worked formidably well, with little Mathieu Valbuena, who scored, vibrant on the wing.
Honduras had already been comfortably beaten 3–0, with Benzema scoring twice, but the euphoria faded when Ecuador held the French to a goalless draw, though Deschamps had made half a dozen changes and said he was satisfied with the result. But now in Rio it was sudden death and they would be up against a reorganised Germany, with Lahm, however effective he had been in midfield, at right back in a 4–2–3–1 system, with Klose on the field for fully sixty-eight minutes.
Though their margin of victory was merely 1–0, the big centre-back Mats Hummels brushing off a challenge by Raphaël Varane and heading in Toni Kroos’s fast free kick, the fact was that France were seldom threatening, though Deschamps remarked, ‘I don’t think there was a huge gap between the teams. We had some chances but we weren’t as efficient or as lucky as we could have been.’ Benzema was largely subdued, but late on Neuer had to make a fine one-handed save to repel his shot.
So to the amazing, cataclysmic, humiliating defeat in the semi-finals of Brazil, a phenomenon which will echo through the annals of football. Should it have happened anywhere else it would still have been a monumental surprise. That the Brazilians should be thrashed on their own territory simply beggared belief. Yet Germany, for all their ebullient talent, did not have a salient star: no Messi, no Neymar, no Ronaldo. Nor had their progress to this stage of the competition been overwhelmingly impressive. Countries initially far less favoured than Brazil had given the Germans a much harder run for their money.
Yet on that unforgettable day the Germans displayed an iron will, a rhythmic movement, a technique and an intelligence which the Brazilians could not begin to match. One might also mention the word ‘morale’. After that burst of three German goals between the twenty-third and twenty-sixth minute, it was palpably clear that the Brazilians had lost all hope. They had not been beaten at home in a competitive match since 1975. If, as was said, the country had been ‘haunted’ by its defeat by Uruguay at the Maracanã in the 1950 tournament, in a match which could hardly have been a more dramatic Final (even if the crazy structure of that tournament meant it was actually a group game), 2–1 was hardly 7–1. And only some desperate and gallant defending by the Uruguayans in the first half had kept the Brazilians at bay in that encounter.
Tactics and formations were hardly relevant in Belo Horizonte. Both teams notionally played 4–2–3–1, but whereas Germany dominated the midfield, constantly throwing Müller, Kroos and Özil forward, Brazil by contrast were laboured and leaden. Well might Luiz Felipe Scolari say, ‘This was the worst day of my life.’ Inevitably, he would soon be gone, though it was strange to find him succeeded by Dunga, once a World Cup-winning captain, but later sacked as a dour and cautious manager.
For his part, Löw declared, ‘We started this project ten years ago, and this is the result of many years of work, beginning with Jürgen Klinsmann, and then we carried it on. I think our strength was being able continually to improve our performance levels.’ Significantly, no fewer than six of t
he team that had beaten Brazil were part of the side that won the European Under-21 Championships in Sweden in 2009, beating England 4–0 in the Final.
Toni Kroos was not one of them, but in this World Cup the versatile twenty-four-year-old came emphatically into his own, scoring twice, devastatingly and plainly demoralisingly, in a minute against Brazil. He showed he was a player of awareness, great skill, high industry and versatility, just as confident playing in deep midfield as just behind the striker or on the flanks.
Against such pace and inspiration, even the suspended Thiago Silva might have struggled to impose resistance. Pity poor Dante, his substitute, condemned to operate as his deputy beside that compulsive absentee, David Luiz. Lucky not to be sent off the field at Wembley when playing for Bayern Munich in the 2013 Champions League Final against Borussia Dortmund, Dante was doomed from the start. You might almost have called it Dante’s Inferno.
When the teams lined up before the game, Luiz sentimentally clutched the injured Neymar’s shirt to his head. Afterwards Scolari would say, somewhat inanely, that the presence of Neymar would have made no difference.
If Germany may have looked a super team that day, invincible, the Final against Argentina would show that their unquestioned merits were greatly exaggerated by Brazil’s invertebrate weakness. After only eleven minutes, Germany took the lead with a goal which emphasised all too clearly Brazil’s weakness. A corner by Kroos eluded a naive Brazilian defence, whose centre-backs had been drawn out of position. The prolific Müller volleyed the ball home. Much worse was to befall Brazil in that fulminating burst between the twenty-third and twenty-sixth minutes. First, an irresistible Kroos raced through the centre, passing to Müller, who flicked on to Klose. César blocked his first shot, but Klose followed up to put in the rebound, thus establishing a new World Cup record of scoring sixteen goals in total. Next, Kroos would score twice in rapid succession. First he found Özil, who launched Lahm on the overlap. His cross eluded Müller, but Kroos fired home left-footed. His next goal would be scored with his right foot. Robbing a dilatory Fernandinho, he passed left to an equally dynamic Khedira, before converting the return. Brazil’s defence had gone walkabout.
The Story of the World Cup Page 58
