7 – 1. Really, Germany?

Illustration credits: Saumya Kumar

The two semifinals could not have been more different, one was a crazy goalfest while the other made you wish you had a magic wand that you could point at the players and make them do something! I have lost count of the number of people who complained that they missed Germany’s third goal because well, they were still celebrating Miroslav Klose’s epic record goal. This match made jaws drop lower than when Sharapova said she did not know who Sachin Tendulkar was. True story, bro. It was a real German blitzkrieg.

I don’t know if this match falls in my top three favourite matches of this World Cup but it certainly was one of the saddest I have seen this time around. Really, the amount of tears shed by the people of Brazil that day could have probably provided the newly formed state of Telangana water for a week. Sometime during the second half of the match I felt like turning off the T.V. , just to not see the looks of despair on the faces of the many many Brazilians who came to the stadium to cheer their team.

What is also notable about this match is how the internet reacted to it. This match is the ‘most talked about’ game of any sport ever on Twitter, I read somewhere that there were more than 35 million Tweets referring to this game. And I am sure all of us have come across the Sad Brazilians Tumblr. I am sure I will never forget that old Brazilian man, Clovis Fernandes ( he calls himself Brazil’s 12th man, and has been to seven other World Cups) with the adorable mustache clutching the World Cup replica and sitting morosely in the stands, apparently he gave the Cup to a young German girl after the match asking her to ‘take it home’. Such feels, right? But then again it was a match which deserves to be remembered.

The Germans are playing like a cohesive unit, they seem like an unstoppable force, intent on taking the Cup to Berlin. They last won in 1990, back when they were still West Germany. Argentina will have to come out all guns blazing to withstand this German team. More on the Argentinian team next time. Whatever it is, I can almost hear the whole of Germany collectively thinking,

“I did my waiting , twenty four years of it!”

Haha, twenty points for all those who got the slightly modified Sirius Black quote from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban!