Totally Unexpected … Brazil v Germany, World Cup Semi-Final.

So I finish this day in Tamworth a little later than expected; but doesn’t worry me too much. I am still confident I will be at home in front of the TV in time for the Brazil v. Germany World Cup semi-final game. At this point, not being addicted to the World Cup matches I freely confess I thought it started at 5 p.m. English time. But the road was busier than I had expected. Sod’s law. The traffic lights all against me. The queues always in my lane.

Still, I told myself, no need to panic. Imagined that, without Neymar (broken vertebrae in the last game in one of the last rough-house challenges in a whole series of lunges, assaults, dives and pantomime injuries) and Tiago Silva (suspended after second yellow card) the game would be well in progress. In my fantasy Germany would score first, then be inexorably reeled in and Brazil to score the much-deserved winner somewhere around eighty minutes.

Got back at 5.15. No football on TV. Checked the TV schedules: ahem… …  nine o’clock start.

Time to watch highlights of the Tour de France, take a ‘phone call from my mother, talk about the impending holiday in Cornwall, discover that Walsall have signed up Jordan Cook (said to be a striker) and have a couple of Spanish players on trial and get a beer, incidentally and very neatly avoiding having to listen to the whole overblown chitter-chatter of the pundits before the actual kick off.

Then it all started to happen!

Brazil, frankly, despite massive support from the crowd, unbelievably totally blew it.

Wrong tactics, wrong personnel, overly emotional, overly hyped …

Or simple facing a superior team that played with efficiency, style and real purpose. Making holes in the Brazilian defence and whatever they tried to pass off as a midfield German players also showed silky skills and deft touches.

Some bluster and attempts to intimidate from a lacklustre David Luis – skipper for the night – and a ridiculous dive by Marcelo seeking a penalty were sad glimpses in the early moments.

As eleven minutes clicked up, super approach play and Miroslav Klose stuck Germany in the lead. Then a German avalanche engulfed the Brazilians who looked punch-drunk and vulnerable.

 

More goals, inevitably followed in what was described accurately at one point by commentator Martin Keown as a “testimonial game”.

By half time the Brazilians were out of it completely. Five nil down. The crowd quietened and broken spirited. Pictures of fans openly weeping filled the TV screen.

Eventual result: Seven one; the Brazilian fans reduced to booing on-the-giant-screen pictures of the players substituted. Didn’t like that: poor attitude. Remind me of that comment if I ever, publicly veer away from proper support of my own team and act so disrespectfully. Maybe “everybody has a bad day at the office” doesn’t begin to cover the vast abyss between teams out there, the often gross ineptitude of usually world-class players but I find that unacceptable. Cheering the opposition? Nothing wrong there. Criticism of your own team? Fine in private or when constructive. but Boo-ing yer own?

 

(There was a time, back in the day, when I became disenchanted with what I was seeing at Walsall. Tommy Coakley was manager at the time: a little more than out of his depth I guess looking back), but I simply stopped going. Bought a mountain bike and stayed away.)

Happily things have moved on at the Saddlers –as they always will. Brazil will now have a time of introspection – as a team and as a country. Doubtless we will now hear more of the protestors who criticised their government for staging the finals (feeling there were more urgent priorities, like health, poverty and education). But the players and manager will have to “cowboy up” to participate in the third/fourth place play-off game and this may be a time to salvage some pride.

So, all of my “tips” (“England,” said my heart;  “Italy,”  suggested the library sweepstake and “Brazil!” calculated my logical (?) brain) are out of contention. But the football has been compelling in these knock-out stages.

The Drama and the Pantomime Villain.

World Cup Finals

Brazil vs Chile

I am sitting here, exhausted, less by a yesterday spent  helping to decorate our  daughter’s new house  than by the couple of breath taking hours I have spent watching exciting drama unfold in Belo Horizonte. A match full of thrills, spills, endless endeavour and end to end football. A game that showed skilful players can also go toe-to-toe, taking and dishing out hard – but generally fair – physical punishment. Long-range and accurate shooting, long mazy dribbles, one-two passes, headers, agility from both keepers, and a stadium filled with supporters out to enjoy the spectacle and give their teams total support. A game that had me on the edge of my seat. A game that would have made a marvellous final.

The stadium filled with fans wearing either the bright yellow of Brazil or the proud red of Chile. Fans grouped and mixed together. Another level of atmosphere altogether.

Effort, pride, skill and emotion as the game see-sawed from end to end. Brazil taking the lead. The Chilean manager Jorge Sampaoli striding like a Ted Hughes caged tiger in the technical area, tense like a fist. Prowling. The tactics he had given his team worked. A loose throw in, possession seized and the ball beautifully turned into the Brazilian penalty box for Alexis Sanchez to rifle the ball into the net.

Some refereeing I was, at first annoyed by, big tackles going without remark or warning. But credit to Howard Webb and his two assistants (retrospectively) for letting the tow teams rip into each other with full-blooded challenges and muscle. Braver still in the early part of the second half he disallowed a Hulk goal for handball … when t=it would have been far, far easier to let it stand and give the well-supported home team the edge.

Instead the decision seemed to rock the Brazilian team a lot. Chile pressed them back and back and back and were on top for long spells – just could not score.

Inevitably extra time came and went. Penalties!

Great saves by Julio Cesar kept the first Chile penalties out, but the team rallied. Drew level. A fine display of nerves from all involved, but especially Neymar, tempting Claudio Brava (Chile’s captain) into diving (he didn’t) before the ball was struck. Brazil went through when their last penalty taker hit the post.

But what a brave effort and what an inspiring spectacle for the world audience.

It could have been the final, so intense was the competition. It could have been none of the better English derby game, with the strength of tackles and challenges going in; the exhausting amount of commitment shown by all.

Contrast this to the despicable, truly irrational behaviour of a most talented but seriously misguided Luis Suarez, biting Italian defender Chiellini during a game. Not the first time he has done this, having previously done so while wearing an Ajax and a Liverpool shirt. Both punished.

This third offence, seen by a world wide audience is exactly the wrong kind of example, taking the glory from what is still a simple, beautiful and beautifully simple game. He has been given a four month football ban. Long enough?

I am truly not sure.

 

On a more mundane, but Saddlers-style note, we have failed to get Febian Brandy back. After he was released by Sheffield United he decided to go to Championship club Rotherham. Understandable: a higher level of football, more money. But disappointing at the same tie. Wish him well – unless we play them of course!

Summer Solstice Been and Gone.

Phew!

We’ve had a couple of days of scorching weather either side of the summer solstice (by scorching I mean, for England, of course – that’ll be twenty plus Celsius)

And I am typing this during the half time break of ITV televised live game between Cameroon and Brazil. The atmosphere is crackling in the stadium: yellow shirted Brazilians swamping the seats and whooping it up in stunning fervour.

The score is 2 – 1. Two great gaols from Neymar – but Cameroon are full of spirit. It’s a proper game!

       

And England are out. Losing 2 -1 to a dogged Luis Suarez inspired Uruguay. Out-played and out- fought. Just not good enough. I am well past the recriminations stage: they are not realistic the ranting fools that call for his head, or changes to rules.We lacked skill and we didn’t have the determination to give that little bit more that overpowers, intimidates, shocks and confounds those against whom we played. There are questions to be answered, but not those posed by the fickle media. There are points to be made about the European – particularly English Premier league – way of treating football as business, not football as sport. Rumours doing the early rounds that the F.I.F.A. World Cup may not continue as a competition; that U.E.F.A. will set up an opposite/different competition.

We have one game left: tomorrow night against a Costa Rica team that have surprised and impressed their opponents so far.

But, at the moment I am truly caught up in a game! Football as I like it. The match is about skill, expectation, underdogs, hope and luck. It feels like a game. Unlike the two that England turned up to earlier. Honestly, I have few expectations of the type of player that pull on the national shirts for my country these days. I see them as – no fault of their own, perhaps – being far removed from the fans. It’s about the wages, but about far, far more. Pride, for example. Passion. Never-say-die; that Alf-Tupper willingness to go on and on and on that Uruguay’s Suarez demonstrated so perfectly in coming back from a serious injury and walloping two goals past Joe Hart – even after he should have been exhausted. I am sure such bulldog spirit used to be an English trade mark.

The game is played on the pitch and the likes of Rooney (particularly) seem content to believe the drivel pulped out by the press. Ego, not effort.

Ah well …

Wimbledon tennis championship started this week. How will Andy Murray cope this year?

 

 

The Tour de France begins in eleven days. Begins in – of all places –  Yorkshire. The first stages being as follows:

Saturday 5th July: first stage, Leeds Harrogate, 190 km Sunday 6th July: second stage, York Sheffield, 200 km Monday 7th July: third stage, Cambridge London, 170 km

Back to my own football club: lowly Saddlers with big dreams. A whole host of pre-season friendlies coming up, some activity in signing up players: Joe O’Connor as replacement (though of course we do not “replace” people as simply as that) for Andy Butler who couldn’t agree on a deal and has joined Sheffield Utd. Wales under-19 and under 21 forward Tom Bradshaw, from Shrewsbury Town and a  non-League goalkeeper, Craig MacGillivray (from Harrogate).

I am looking forward to more of the Brazil game (have to go in a moment) but also to the start of the season. Fixtures are out now and we get one of my least favourite places out of the way on day one: Port Vale away.

… and, who knows maybe some fire from the England team in their last game in Brazil?

 

images: Neymar in the net: mirror.co.uk

Cameroon lion: metro.co.uk

Andy Murray (last year): telegraph.co.uk