The carnival is over

The show that stops the world is over. Gone. Finished. Another four years have to go by before we can get ourselves all worked up again about the best teams in the world (and England) vying for the ultimate sporting trophy.

How did South Africa compare with previous World Cup tournaments? Well, I’d love to hear your opinions, but for me, it was, in the end, much of a muchness.

The team most people said before a ball was kicked (in qualifying!) won… Actually, I almost predicted this, too. I say almost, because in my predictions (I have all the sheets here laid out in front of me now) I always came up with (except in the one where my guiding principle was what I would want to happen – England won that one… Cue loud, baying, hollow laugh) Brazil or Holland against Spain, but I don’t think I ever actually wrote down who I thought would win.

No, I only predicted Spain would win for certain after I examined who I thought would win the final after the semi-final results. My heart said Netherlands, so I knew Spain would win. (My thoughts are the kiss of death to any football team – sorry West Brom… Sorry England.)

A little more trumpet blowing if I may… I predicted the final (pretty much), I predicted that Uruguay would do well (after both my wife and I pulled them out of two separate sweeps), I predicted England would be crap. Okay, not exactly Nostradamus, but not bad by my standards.

All right, enough of my masturbatory spoutings – how did South Africa 2010 actually compare with previous World Cups.

Well, the final was almost a disappointment, but then again, they usually are. The group stages were generally dull, but then again, they usually are. As ever, the really exciting games came out of quarter finals and semi-finals… As they usually do. The group stage this year had a couple of big wins, a couple of exciting matches and a couple of big teams dropping out (France was a good one, because they had done it just eight years previously. Italy, too, was a shock, but fully deserved. My how we laughed and gloated in England… for about three days).

But it’s the final that is always the real disappointment and has been for years now… Decades. I’ve been sitting here, trying to remember the last time there was a really good final – not just a good one, but a really good one. This is what I have come up with…

2006: Dull
2002: Forgetable
1998: good, but overshadowed by the Ronaldo panic attack. How good a game is it if that’s almost all you can remember?
1994: The dullest, most wretched World Cup final ever in history. Brazil should really, in all conscience, give that one back and pretend it never happened. The best thing about the 1994 World Cup Final? Some scraggy Italian with a vomit-inspiring pony tail missing a penalty. Utterly crap. No excuse – strike it from the records.
1990: Good
1986: Good (but it was that cheating wanker’s greatest moment, so I can’t possibly allow it to stand)
1982: I remember nothing about it at all – not even which teams were in it. I refuse to google it – a World Cup final should stick in the memory. (1994 does simply because it was one of the worst games of football I have ever seen.)
1978: Very good… Hey! Very good! (But not REALLY good)
1974: Very good (I refer the honourable readers to 1978)
1970: Outstanding…
Wow! Outstanding! How about that? It’s been 40 years since we had something other than ‘very good’ in the World Cup final.

Damn! Going back through my previous blogs, that means we need to revive the Jules Rimet trophy… No, that’s a can of worms I’m not willing to consider.

(PS – I have since looked up the 1982 final. Italy 3, Germany 2. I have trouble believing that that could have been anything other than a class game of football... But I still can't remember it. The name 'Rossi' keeps flashing across my consciousness... Some stirrings are felt in my loins... I think I must have been a bit out of my head in June/July 1982... There is hope for the World – but, as ever, dispiritingly, it involves Germany.)