As the World Cup comes to a close this weekend, modesty prevents me from going too far in highlighting the fact that I tipped Germany as the winners before the start. So does the fact that they haven’t won it yet.
Looking back now on the preview I wrote here a month ago, it’s a bit of a relief to see that most of what I said turned out to be more or less correct.
My stated belief was that Germany’s experience and quality of coaching would shine through, and their lack of a prolific striker would be made up for by the wider goalscoring potential throughout the team.
That’s pretty much how it’s turned out, while in the case of Brazil I pointed to the expectation and pressure of playing at home as the main argument against them winning it, and I do think that was a big factor on Tuesday night.
When I said that “it only takes a bad quarter of an hour to get knocked out”, having seen Brazil go that way in the last two World Cups, I could never have imagined how relevant that would turn out to be, with five goals being conceded in just over a quarter of an hour in that fateful semi final.
Belgium were likely to do well but would prove to be not quite up to the level of the real contenders; France had a great chance to reach the quarter finals but were unlikely to get further; the reputation of Italy as slow starters was likely to be a luxury they couldn’t afford this time; the African teams would make a decent showing.
Of course some of my other forecasts weren’t so successful. The belief that Cristiano Ronaldo might drag Portugal through a few rounds was compromised by the realisation that the team he was playing in just wasn’t good enough; my faith in the ability of England to go far was undone largely by some suspect defending.
And so to the final, and the end of a long wait for one of the game’s superpowers – either 28 years for Argentina, or 24 for Germany, whose last win was so long ago they were still playing as West Germany then.
If we’re counting the unified Germany as a continuation of that team, which is customary, then it’s the first final pairing ever to come round three times. 1986 in Mexico City was a thriller in which the Germans came from two down to draw level, only to be undone by Jorge Burruchaga’s winning goal with seven minutes to go; Rome 1990 was a shambles of a match in which Argentina had two players sent off, either side of Andreas Brehme’s decisive late penalty.
It would be hard to argue against the view that Sunday’s final is between the two best teams in the tournament, and it probably also features the two best players, Lionel Messi and Thomas Muller (pictured above).
Both have the potential to be decisive on the night, and if either of them is, it should see them go down as the player of the tournament. Messi hasn’t quite reached the heights that many of us hoped to see but, rightly or wrongly, a decisive contribution in the Maracana could close the case for many people on the “is he the greatest of all time” debate.
The accepted narrative that Argentina would be increasingly exposed defensively as the tournament wore on, which admittedly I believed as much as anyone, hasn’t really transpired so far. If anything they’ve grown stronger towards the back; indeed they’re the only team not to have conceded a goal in the knockout stage, although all that arguably has at least as much to do with the form of Javier Mascherano as the defence itself.
Of course the whole tournament has tightened up at a remarkable rate generally as it’s progressed. The one glaring exception was Germany’s magnificent seven against Brazil. For Argentina the challenge will be to stop the Germans playing that way again; for Germany the focus is much more on neutralising a single player in Messi.
The Dutch had to take a certain amount of credit for limiting his impact in the semi final, and Joachim Loew has to be backed to find a way of doing the same again with his team on Sunday night.
Then again, Germany have become curiously unpredictable at the back. We saw that in qualifying, and we’ve seen it again in Brazil. Mats Hummels has been their best defender through the tournament, and with his fitness still in doubt, whether or not he plays could be a key factor in the final.
So could the scoring of the first goal. If Germany go in front, Argentina will have to become a bit more expansive, and those defensive suspicions could finally come to the fore. An early goal for Argentina wouldn’t have the same sort of impact on Germany’s approach, and could make for a final to remember.
Overall then, my feeling is that Germany are simply a better team than Argentina, with better players and more big-time experience. Having gone against the general view by backing them from the start, I don’t see any reason to change now.
