Brazil v Holland: World Cup 2014 third-place playoff live!Brazil take on Holland and hope to restore pride after lossScott Murray on an unloved match that can stir the soulEmail ian.mccourt@theguardian with yo ideasOr get in touch over on the Twitter @ianmccourt 7.30pm BSTMichael Collins. No, not the Irish one who was minister for finance, gunrunning, daylight robbery and general mayhem. The American one. The one who, in the words of Charles Lindbergh, experienced an aloneness unknown to man before. While Neil Armstrong was off messing up his lines and Buzz Aldrin was delaying his decent onto the surface of the Moon so he could urinate everybody has their firsts on the Moon, he quipped Collins was fidgeting nervously in the Columbia space model. If they fail to rise from the surface [of the Moon], or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it, he wrote at the time. He need not have worried. The lads made it back without a hitch. In fact, the hitch came when they landed back on Earth. Armstrong joined the J.D Salinger Club for Peace and Quiet and Aldrin took to drink like a jacket to a hanger. Collins, however, led a quiet life. So quiet, most people forget about him. Who was the third astronaut on the Apollo 11 mission? they often pose at the local pub quiz. Ah yeah, yer man, you know him, whatshisname. Few can answer. Few remember who was third.Ah yes, third. Who cares about coming third in a World Cup? No one. Who wants to boast they came third in a World Cup? No one. Most players would be happier to get I voted Conservative and think David Cameron is doing a stand-up job tattooed onto their lower torso and be forced to walk around in a brightly coloured crop-top for 365 days straight rather than hold up that bronze medal. For you see, when you get past the quarter-finals and into the semis, all that matters is winning. Eff style, eff history, eff the crowd, eff the TV pundits, eff the print pundits, eff the bandwagon jumpers, eff the haters. Eff it all. Except the winning. And winning is exactly what Brazil and Holland could not do at that stage of this glorious tournament.Losing 7-1 is the same as losing on penalties, argued Louis van Gaal after Argentina did one to his Dutch side the other night. He had a point. They both involved loses and they both involved teams saying so-long to a World Cup final. Brazils one was different though, very different. The last time something along these lines happened to stadium doctors treated 169 people for fits of hysteria and other troubles [and] six were taken to hospital seriously ill. It was a defeat that the entire country has never quite got over. And like that loss to Uruguay, this one will reverberate from Roraima to Rio Grande do Sul. Football is Brazils pride and joy, their greatest export, it is how they define themselves to the world. But in a couple of hundred seconds their image, their self-confidence, their samba-swagger has been destroyed. Incinerated. Annihilated. Obliterated. Its like that scene in The Simpsons when Laura tells Bart she has a boyfriend and he imagines her ripping out his beating hart and kicking it into the bin. And said defeat has left them with more complicated questions than a Mensa test. Where do they go from here? Do they redefine how they play football? Do they completely overhaul the system? And what of the politicians who threw their support and public money behind this bid for the hexa? Brazil is the seventh (seventh! you couldnt make this up) largest economy on this here planet and its leader, Dilma Rousseff, has closely identified with the team throughout this tournament. Had Brazil won this World Cup, she could probably send out the invites for election-winning party and, of course, public/consumer confidence and all that jazz that goes way above most of our heads would be through the roof. As Joshua Keating pointed out in his Slate blog:If Brazil had won the tournament, it could have changed the political significance of the entire event. If the country had made a dignified exit in the late rounds, it probably wouldnt have had that much of an impact either way. But a defeat this humiliating is going to remind a lot of voters of why they were upset about the World Cup in the first place. ... ...read moreBy Ian McCourt Brazil take on Holland and hope to restore pride after lossScott Murray on an unloved match that can stir the soulEmail ian.mccourt@theguardian with yo ideasOr get in touch over on the Twitter @ianmccourt 7.30pm BSTMichael Collins. No, not the Irish one who was minister for finance, gunrunning, daylight robbery and general mayhem. The American one. The one who, in the words of Charles Lindbergh, experienced an aloneness unknown to man before. While Neil Armstrong was off messing up his lines and Buzz Aldrin was delaying his decent onto the surface of the Moon so he could urinate everybody has their firsts on the Moon, he quipped Collins was fidgeting nervously in the Columbia space model. If they fail to rise from the surface [of the Moon], or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it, he wrote at the time. He need not have worried. The lads made it back without a hitch. In fact, the hitch came when they landed back on Earth. Armstrong joined the J.D Salinger Club for Peace and Quiet and Aldrin took to drink like a jacket to a hanger. Collins, however, led a quiet life. So quiet, most people forget about him. Who was the third astronaut on the Apollo 11 mission? they often pose at the local pub quiz. Ah yeah, yer man, you know him, whatshisname. Few can answer. Few remember who was third.Ah yes, third. Who cares about coming third in a World Cup? No one. Who wants to boast they came third in a World Cup? No one. Most players would be happier to get I voted Conservative and think David Cameron is doing a stand-up job tattooed onto their lower torso and be forced to walk around in a brightly coloured crop-top for 365 days straight rather than hold up that bronze medal. For you see, when you get past the quarter-finals and into the semis, all that matters is winning. Eff style, eff history, eff the crowd, eff the TV pundits, eff the print pundits, eff the bandwagon jumpers, eff the haters. Eff it all. Except the winning. And winning is exactly what Brazil and Holland could not do at that stage of this glorious tournament.Losing 7-1 is the same as losing on penalties, argued Louis van Gaal after Argentina did one to his Dutch side the other night. He had a point. They both involved loses and they both involved teams saying so-long to a World Cup final. Brazils one was different though, very different. The last time something along these lines happened to stadium doctors treated 169 people for fits of hysteria and other troubles [and] six were taken to hospital seriously ill. It was a defeat that the entire country has never quite got over. And like that loss to Uruguay, this one will reverberate from Roraima to Rio Grande do Sul. Football is Brazils pride and joy, their greatest export, it is how they define themselves to the world. But in a couple of hundred seconds their image, their self-confidence, their samba-swagger has been destroyed. Incinerated. Annihilated. Obliterated. Its like that scene in The Simpsons when Laura tells Bart she has a boyfriend and he imagines her ripping out his beating hart and kicking it into the bin. And said defeat has left them with more complicated questions than a Mensa test. Where do they go from here? Do they redefine how they play football? Do they completely overhaul the system? And what of the politicians who threw their support and public money behind this bid for the hexa? Brazil is the seventh (seventh! you couldnt make this up) largest economy on this here planet and its leader, Dilma Rousseff, has closely identified with the team throughout this tournament. Had Brazil won this World Cup, she could probably send out the invites for election-winning party and, of course, public/consumer confidence and all that jazz that goes way above most of our heads would be through the roof. As Joshua Keating pointed out in his Slate blog:If Brazil had won the tournament, it could have changed the political significance of the entire event. If the country had made a dignified exit in the late rounds, it probably wouldnt have had that much of an impact either way. But a defeat this humiliating is going to remind a lot of voters of why they were upset about the World Cup in the first place. ... ...read more Source: The Guardian ift.tt/1gB4pon
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 19:28:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015