Farewell, then, World Cup
It was a good but not a great World Cup. The final, however, was worthy of the occasion and the fears that Germany would reduce the game to a mindless bore proved groundless. They played their best football of the tournament, but a team that anchors its match concept on a goalkeeper does not deserve to win football's greatest prize. It's about scoring goals, not stopping them, after all.
Tom Humphries in the Irish Times captures the essence of this marvellous quadrennial event:
"There is something precious about the notion of the World Cup and the notion of 4 billion people watching it. Nothing else bar horror and catastrophe unites us in quite the same way. Last night it was possible to look around the International Stadium in Yokohama and see the colours or flags of about 20 of the competing nations mingled with the dominant favours of the competing sides. Fans mixed together happily, the drums and the horns played and a microcosm of the hold which a simple game has on so many imaginations was clear. It was lovely to experience."
