Yesterday’s final ushered me into an emotional, existential Kalahari. Unable to resume life as usual here in South Africa, whatever that means, my therapy consists in part of playing everyone’s favorite fun game: World Cup All-Stars, version 2.0 (click here for 1.0).
Initially, the simple choice was to pick the entire Spain squad with just two changes: Fucile for Capdevila and Forlan for Torres/Pedro. But that wouldn’t be much fun. So here are my picks:
Neuer
Fucile, Juan, Pique, Sergio Ramos
Mueller, Schweinsteiger, Xavi, Sneijder
Villa, Forlan
Best Players: Forlan and Sergio Ramos (because defenders are people too)
Goal of the Tournament: Van Bronckhorst in Netherlands v Uruguay (quality and importance)
Best Match of the Tournament: USA-Slovenia 2-2 (which should have gone down as one of the greatest comeback victories in World Cup history, right Mr. Coulibaly?)
Best Referee: Viktor Kassai of Hungary (This cool cat ref’d one of the cleanest World Cup semifinals ever: Spain-Germany)
Best Moments: Tshabalala’s goal for Bafana in the opener vs Mexico (when, for a few minutes, it seemed another World Cup was possible) and Buffon signing my daughters’ jersey and flag before Slovakia-Italy.