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.
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My Team of the Tournament
Stekelenburg
Sergio Ramos, Puyol, Schneider, Van Bronckhorst
Mueller, Schweinsteiger, Iniesta, Sneijder
Forlan, Villa
Subs: Casillas, Maicon, Lucio, Khedira, Maxi Perreira, Messi, Klose
Best Player: Forlan (was Villa till the final few days)
Goal of the Tournament: Van Bronckhorst – if the net hadn’t been there it would have hit me on the head … and I was sitting high up!
Best Match of the Tournament: USA v Slovenia and USA v Ghana
Best Referee: Nishimura of Japan – why was he only 4th official for the Final?
Best Moment: Those 2 1/2 seconds after Bafana’s third goal v France – before someone said to me, ‘get up of fthe floor, it’s been disallowed for offsides’.
—-Enyeama—-
Maicon——–Pique——Puyol——-Lahm
Mueller———–Xabi Alonso—Mascherano—–Robben
———————————————–David Villa—–
—————————Forlan—————————-
Bench: Lugano, Iniesta, Sneijder, Schweinsteiger, Klose
Best Players: David Villa and Diego Forlan
Goals of the Tournament: David Villa against Honduras, Tevez against Mexico, Von Bronckhorst vs Uruguay
Best Match of the Tournament: Germany 4 – Argentina 0. Was the most entertaining and open game of the tournament. Lots of chances and lots of goals.
Best Referee: Viktor Kassai
Best Moments: The Suarez handball to save Uruguay, most emotionally intense and controversial moment of the World Cup. Iniesta’s winner to launch the most beautiful 24 hour celebration that culminated with Pepe Reina’s ‘show’ in Madrid.
Casillas (not picking him would piss off my son, Rustin)
Coentrao (this one’s destined for stardom), Lucio and Puyol (I like my central defenders ugly, brutish, scary, the stuff that nightmares are made of) Sergio Ramos (Ah, now this is just pure class)
Mueller (like a smooth, efficient German vehicle), Van Bommel (one of the middle two needs to have balls of steel and the emotion of a psychopath) Xavi (Einsten, Plato, TS Eliot, need I say more?), Robben (Usain Bolt with a ball, Tinker Bell in football shorts)
Villa and Forlan (games are won by players capable of turning nothing into something)
Friends, why do have this feeling that we have forgotten one of the technically mercurial teams of the tournament, Mexico? In my humble opinion, this Mexico team needed five players from outside to make it a dream team…Nigerian Golakeeper Enyeama whose performance relative to the quality of his team was unbelievable, Brazilian Lucio to organize organize the defense, Spanish Iniesta to give the already technically giftedMexican D midfield some cutting edge, Dutch Robben to inject some sweet wickedness in pace and fouls – or even redcards for opponent teams, and German striker Klose, the guy who knows how to put the goal between the posts.
My 11:
Neuer
Lahm, Puyol, Pique & Sergio Ramos
Mueller, Xavi, Schweinsteiger & Sneijder,
Villa & Forlan
Best Match: Watching Germany vs Argentina in a Troyville shebeen, Bafana vs Mexico in the stadium (close second) just for the pure emotion of the occasion AND Bafana vs France in the stadium where we dreamt anything was possible during the first half (singing outclassed vuvuzelas)
Worst Match: New Zealand vs Slovakia in Rustenburg followed by Bafana vs Uruguay at Loftus (I suppose that was to be expected playing our national game at a Pretoria rugby stadium where thousands streamed out of the stadium after Khune’s criminal penalty, while others were more concerned with drinking that crappy beer on sale and trying to blow the vuvuzela rather than encouraging our team).
Best personal moment: After the opening game a South African fan asked my partner (being Mexican dressed in a Mexican kit) ‘are you confused?’
Hey! Peter, great to see the blog. Frankly, this world cup was one of the worst I’ve seen. More diving, rough play, bad officiating and lack of scoring than I remember. SA came off beautifully I thought, but we couldn’t get any decent on-the-ground press reports here, so I don’t know what was going on behind the lights. Here’s my team – these are the WC guys I would WANT to play with, not necessarily the best team.
Manager : Who cares? I want Joachim LOEW’s STYLE
Best Uniforms – Paraguy’s red/whit, with blue shorts, striped socks.
Kingson
Lahm, Pujol, Mertesacker, PAK Nam Chol
Oezil, Lampard, Schweinsteiger, Lucas Neill (Holding Mid)
Forlan, Rooney
Best Goal, Villa’s dribble-through-three and curve shot…
Best match – for third place.
Worst match – so many, hard to say