World Cup 2010: “Celebration” or controversial?

Finally the World Cup came to an end with the pre tournament favourite’s Spain being crowned Champions of the World. It was the first time Brazil, Italy, Germany or Argentina were not present in the finals not to mention the Spanish 1-0(ET) victory over Netherlands resulted in a new entrant in the football elite as the eighth champions. It also gave the Netherlands the dubious and frustrating fact of being three time finalist, never the winner. The finals as a whole was universally deemed an anti climax despite both the Spanish and Dutch being labeled “possession specialists” and “masters of total football” playing out an ill-tempered affair which made the English referee Howard Webb dole an unprecedented 14 yellow cards, one of them a second yellow card offence.

The tournament had stooped to new levels of boredom even before that lackluster final but every other powerful entity in the football world including FIFA and the media were trying to force this World Cup to be a success in people’s minds with the most well funded marketing strategy. They even came with statistics to prove this, claiming the World Cup was watched by over 1.3 billion people all over the world. However after all the hype had settled and international attention meandered away from football, FIFA in a response to an independent inquiry conducted by British tabloid Independent has confessed to over-estimating and-exaggerating figures often especially from the African and Asian continents. Furthermore the World Cup was marred by another depressing statistic which was very poor goals per game ratio especially in the group stages and an obscene number of refereeing errors even in the Finals itself.

Firstly the ball itself a.k.a Jabulani was a ball favouring less technical sides especially the African sides with added pace and unpredictability. Conspiracy anyone? Watching the games itself was reduced to just “seeing football” and not “feeling football” as the infamous vuvuzela’s criminally justified by a few South African interests calling it part of African culture. Originally the vuvuzela is from Latin America but that continent exercises restraint in its use; basically by using it only for celebrating goals. The atmosphere in South Africa resembled the noise from a bee-hive and not a stadia packed with over 50,000 passionate supporters chanting their favourite player’s names. Credit to England whose supporters tried to break this rut in the match against Slovenia, but absolutely no credit for the players for their capitulation against a rampant German side. The same goes to an Italian side that showed no gut at all in any of the matches and was an embarrassment as defending champions who rather ironically was expected to be dumped out in the group stages by Italian newspaper Tuttosport with the blame squarely and correctly on egoistic coach Marcello Lippi.

Speaking of coaches, the name Raymond would not be appreciated by any mother naming a new-born in France. Les bleus was troubled by an internal strife uncontrolled by coach Domenech and a disenchanted squad guilty of “handing” themselves a spot in the World Cup by handling the ball before the goal that dumped Ireland out of participating in the World Cup. News is that the new France coach Laurent Blanc has axed all 23 players that went to South Africa. Argentina might sing their teams praises but Maradona kept his title of being a prima donna with team selection bordering on lunacy causing their rather straightforward exit. And finally Brazil, the eternal favourite for any World Cup imploded on the big stage; the implosion caused by an over pragmatic coach in Dunga. All of this essentially resulted in ousting of all the “Goliath’s” of world football and allowing a “David” aptly led by a certain ‘David’ Villa to their first World Cup crown. You need a Goliath for a David to fell for football romantics’ atleast, but here ‘David’ romped home with no trouble at all.

All this is not an attempt to undermine Spain’s success who certainly have deserved their victory as they have been over the past decade producing the finest footballers with this team being the finest. It would have been criminal had the ‘butchering’ Dutch won just based on the amount of vile tackles made by them. Anyway, here’s to a better World Cup ’14 in Brazil and Africa; you were an organizational miracle but sadly a footballing failure. It’s not your fault.

By Mathew George