May the best team win

If there is one sport that can truly claim to be the world’s favourite game, it is football. And it is that way because, in many ways, it is the simplest game imaginable. One ball can keep 22 grown men completely occupied for an hour and a half and have thousands more cheering them on from the sidelines. The shoes, the jerseys, even the stadiums are all superfluous. All you really need is the ball and a healthy sense of fun and a little bit of energy. Over the past few weeks, the world has been enthralled by the Fifa World Cup, the ultimate quadrennial competition in the sport and one of the most followed sporting events in the world. While only 32 teams actually get to play, the qualifying tournament includes almost 200 teams from every country in the world. This particular World Cup has the distinction of being the first played on African soil. And the loud noise of the vuvuzelas notwithstanding, it has been a delight to watch.

For starters, it has delivered quite a few upsets: Brazil’s exit in the quarterfinals, Spain’s sudden ability to play cohesively as a team in the semis, the shoddy refereeing that felled many a team by disallowing perfectly legitimate goals, and France’s and Italy’s first-round exits. These factors made the entire tournament unpredictable and therefore more exciting. It is probably why two teams that have never won a World Cup before are now in the finals (though the Netherlands have played in the final twice before). And then, of course, there were the regular features: England’s overhyped team failing to perform again, the Argentine national team discovering that flair alone is not enough to win games and the Americans surprising everybody, including themselves, with their ability to win the occasional game. A World Cup would not be complete without the inevitable heartbreak of fans who really should learn that “team sport” implies that the ability to play together is more important than the number of superstars on a team.

As for today’s final, this newspaper has no favourites. It wishes both Spain and the Netherlands the best of luck and may the better team win. And congratulations to South Africa  for an excellent job on hosting the tournament.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2010.