The World Is Over

If I have anything to show for the last six weeks its a wall covered with newspaper cuttings of men. A debris that decorates my living room, providing fragments of a lost world.  As a tribute to my obsession like a stalker paying homage to his dead muses...

So its gone! Leaving the promise it might reappear in four years. Where do I go from here? Life has been on hold. Some may have noticed the gradual lessening of posts in the last week, a  clear sign that reality has been seeping into my football bubble and now its burst... The final question has to be asked, what did we learn?

In Football Terms...

• Confirmation that Germany are the best team in the World. In the Euros and the last World Cup Germany's team were the most pleasing on the eye but they looked like they had forgotten their football ancestry! Losing in the semi finals of both tournaments. Efficient defending had been replaced by irresponsible attack. This World Cup, the German's smugness (from winning the Champions League titles to domestic league titles and cups) clearly demonstrated they were not short of confidence. The victories in the knock out stages dispelled question of their calmness under pressure and the semi final victory over Brazil was their coronation despite it being five days before the final.  Germany had matured within the tournament, into a team that felt scarily modern, dare I say efficient. 

• If you have a well regulated domestic league you will benefit internationally; Germany are the clear winners of this methodology  (but this is also true of Holland, Argentina and Belgium). In contrast England and Brazil both have poor record of nurturing the best players within their domestic leagues. Brazil is a football brain drain to the rest of Europe, being one of football's biggest exporters of teenagers. In contrast, England are one of biggest importers of footballers with no national representation quota for the team's line ups, no laws stopping top clubs being foreign owned, or being bought with debt and having very few English players playing first team football at the top level. It would sadden any Brazilian to hear Englishman compare their national sides problems to Brazil but really they are that bad.

• Brazil 2014 had the best group stages in any World Cup  I have watched. Great to see so many teams attack the so called bigger sides, instead of trying to play for a tactical draw. I would say three of the games from the Group stages  were better than any game in the knock out stages (Ghana Germany, England Italy, Portugal USA) as these matches were more an open contest and far less cagey and defensive. A reversal to the international norm.

• One person cannot win their team the World Cup. Maybe it was different in 86 but regardless of how much better Messi is  better in comparison to Madonna, the world of football has become more professional than in it was in the past. James Rodriguez was the best player of the tournament because his side played such great attacking football, similarly Messi was not the attacking force everyone wanted him to be in the knock out stages because of the defensive nature of his team. Christiano Ronaldo realized this fact after drawing with the United States, even when they could still qualify out of the group stages he told the World Press that everyone in his team was simply not good enough to win the World Cup.

In Life terms...

• My health has suffered: too much fine ale, late night smoking, screaming and shouting, general embarrassment, posting inappropriate and inane thoughts in attempt to create cohesion to a fractured consciousness, substituting sport over news, lost in stupid statistics, going to bed alone, dirt, dust, hangover, good food, bad food , too much food, forgetting to wash, forgetting to wake up, forgetting, neglecting the protruding forest of facial hair that covers my face, back, bum, watching rather than living, participating in conduit conversations, neglecting friends, family, life,  no sunshine after 5pm, no life after 5PM, nothing but football after 5PM, just the transient joy of the beautiful game and the over use of adjectives. My physical and mental health have suffered but only now in its come down state not at the time when I was ridding high off all those goals. I will not be thirty again and I will not have opportunity to slobber over football again. I am misty eyed with nostalgia and its only been three days. A new structure to my life is needed or at least a structure where I don't start drinking at 5PM.

• Football really does bring people together! So many people who don't care about league football wanted to talk to me about the World Cup. Living in London it actually created the illusion of living within a community coupled with the comfort of anonymity. A purity surrounds international football regardless how much FIFA are corrupt we all still engage, everyone can let the inanity flow.

• Between the posts, matches, beers,  I have had the opportunity to actually spend time with my beloved Charlie. A woman who is so forgiving if she would only shut up about it! Not that she actually says anything! She just has to give me that look! That look, that words cannot express. No one knows that look as it's especially for me but I hope your lucky enough to have a person who can look at you in a similar way. That look combines irritation and acceptance and makes me feel lucky in the knowledge that I have someone who loves me despite my many faults, i.e. a six week football obsession.

• Finally I have learned that the offside trap is not dead, possession football won't win you the World up but defensive rubbish football will get you to the final, only start running in the second half, Americans are nicer as the underdog, never cry during the national anthem, never hold your country's federation to ransom and especially don't kiss the money as you will only score an own goal, there is no morality in football, al jazeera is not a country, if its not in and then it goes in then its still in, Germans get better the more you mock them and protests will never upset a country as losing 7-1 at home.

I measure my life by World Cups but I feel you should only measure in retrospection. Memory will condense the 64 matches or 5,760 minutes  (not including extra time) into moments but the measure of the World Cup will be decided in the journey to the next. So this narrative's end is merely another's beginning.