The Final whistle has blown, and we now have a new World Champion for the next four years. And as an ardent Oranje fan, even I must admit the sentimental favourites have won. After several long years, a European team has finally won in the Western Hemisphere. It is only fitting that the most successful team from the European continent was the first to break this hoodoo. Even more fittingly they defeated their most persistent foe in the World Cup Finals, Argentina.
To many a football fan that has grown up at the same time as me, Germany are a side we like to watch (even if we don’t like admitting it) and all of us have been expecting a trophy for this side for so long that one felt this tournament in Brazil may have been their last shot at World Cup Glory, at least under Jogi Loew. This German side had become so un-German, they attacked, they liked to keep the ball, and they played with a love for the game that was truly infectious. But they were chokers, a team that was well loved but one that always fell short achieving what all football fans knew they had the potential for.
That moment when Mario Gotze scored his magnificent volley which he calmly flicked off his chest, was to many a football fan (of the non-Argentine variety) much like the moment Ross and Rachel got together on Friends, or Andy Murray finally won Wimbledon or if you are that way inclined when Snookie got punched in the face in the first season of Jersey Shore. Finally we had closure
Of course if the result had gone the other way, I would have been writing a different story; best player in the World finally completing his journey that began oh so many years ago from Rosario. A country finally overcoming the legacy of Maradonna and the calmest coach in the world going on to do what no other many in Argentina was able to do before him since the 80s. Alas for my erstwhile colleague this was not to be.
On another day Argentina could have scored three goals, Gonzalo Higuain, would have wrote himself into Argentinean folklore, and the America’s would have remained a fortress holding out against Europeans. That is the ultimate narrative of the World Cup and football in general. Mere inches or seconds make all the difference. At the end of the day this is why we fell in love with it in the first place.
NineSixFourTwo 