Germany produced the greatest World Cup performance of them all - but did they leave a lasting impression as a team?
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As we begin our review of the year, we take a look back at the World Cup in Brazil and assess its defining qualities.
Six
months on from the World Cup finals in Brazil, what persists? What
stays picture-perfect in the memory while all around it fades and ages?
Did the sporting event of 2014 have a singular quality or an iconic team
that made it a classic edition?
World
Cups are more classically defined by their great teams than their great
stars. Perhaps that is an old-fashioned concept in a world obsessed by
the intricacies of Lionel Messi
and Ronaldo’s personal duel for the Ballon d’Or, but it is arguably
collective endeavour that has given greater colour to the World Cup
across generations.
The great, unfulfilled Hungary team of the
1954 finals are woven tightly into football’s tapestry; the same can be
said of Brazil’s all-time greats of 1970; the Total Footballers from the
Netherlands in 1974; Brazil’s freestyle geniuses of 1982; and Spain’s triumphant tiki-taka technicians in 2010.
While on occasion you do get an astonishing feat of individualism a la Diego Maradona
in 1986, largely it is teams and their philosophies of football which
command a more prominent place in the collective memory. And, helpfully,
Cristiano Ronaldo had an awful tournament for Portugal
while Lionel Messi couldn't summon up the energy to make an impact on
the final, just at the moment when he could have erased all doubt as to
his eternal greatness.
Argentina's Lionel Messi reacts after losing to Germany in their extra time in their 2014 World Cup final
But six months on, have Germany left a lasting impression?
Arguably
not in the same way Spain did four years previously, when the style of
play cultivated at first Barcelona and then the national team came to
cast a spell over football, with pass completion stats and obsession
over possession becoming a central feature of the football conversation.
Spain, leaning heavily on their Catalan contingent, changed the
dialogue of the sport.
The
Germany side which won the World Cup have not had the same epochal
impact. Perhaps a rather more complex game founded on quick transitions
and pressing doesn’t lend itself quite so well to the branding process.
There is no equivalent term to tiki-taka which encapsulates the style
forged by Joachim Loew’s side. This is not to say Germany do not have an
identity – quite the opposite – but it is not one which has imprinted
itself on football’s collective consciousness as Spain's did before it.
A
great team lacking a signature style. This was more the triumph of a
system, a structural shake-up which produced the most advanced and
prolific network of academies in the game of football, churning out
countless technically-proficient youngsters with everything at their
disposal to succeed.
And it was sporadically thrilling. An opening 4-0 destruction of Portugal, with Thomas Mueller
scoring a hat-trick to confirm his status as one of the most natural
World Cup superstars ever seen in the game, was quite an opening
statement of intent, but we had to wait until the semi-finals to get the
next paragraph.
Germany finished the group stages relatively unspectacularly when drawing with Ghana and narrowly beating USA, before one-goal margins of victory over Algeria and France.
Another followed in a disappointing final against Argentina – which
itself dampens claims to immortality. But, of course, nestled in between
those wins over France and Argentina was the most explosive World Cup
performance of them all.
It
is that 7-1 victory over Brazil which will endure, rather than any
all-encompassing sense of Germany’s greatness; the most unthinkable
destruction and humiliation of a host nation the World Cup has ever
seen; the brutal vandalism of a country’s pride, hope and hubris. It was
Brazil’s biggest ever World Cup defeat and their first competitive home
defeat in 39 years, with four goals scored by Germany in six minutes.
Brazil’s
wild-eyed torment was astonishing to behold. The seeds of their mental
fragmentation were sown in the lamentable overreaction to Neymar’s
injury, which resembled a state funeral. Thiago Silva’s suspension was
no less influential, even if it inspired fewer tears, allowing as it did
David Luiz to become dangerously unmoored from the back four, resulting
in the bemusing sight of a central defender trying to win a game that
had already been taken away from Brazil all by himself by charging
around all corners of the pitch and inflicting even more damage on his
team. The ultimate football self-flagellation, if an unwilling one:
shame and pain entwined.
This was the moment of the World Cup. A
game for eternity. But the tournament was not without other standout
moments, even if to bastardise an old cliché, 2014 brought us a World
Cup of two halves: the stunning, hi-definition goalfest that was the
group stages and the rather more prosaic undertakings of the knockouts.
James Rodriguez was the great revelation, his six goals for Colombia earning him the Golden Boot, but this was also the World Cup of Netherlands’ 5-1 hammering of Spain, Miroslav Klose eclipsing Ronaldo’s record, Costa Rica's ridiculous run, Luis Suarez biting someone for a third time and Louis van Gaal subbing on a keeper for penalties. Heroes and stories for the ages.
Brazil
2014 generated such a weight of storylines it would be impossible to
pull them all together in one place, even six months on, but above all
it was a tournament which contained the most incredible game ever seen
at a World Cup. And as the months wear on, it is those 90 minutes in
Belo Horizonte that do not lose their lustre, that persist in the
collective memory, that define this tournament.
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