Yep, I’m glad that World Cup is finally over. Quite happy that Italy won The Cup, I was hoping that Brazil would win it, but Italy is the next best thing. It brings back the memory of 12 years ago, on my first day of high school. Quite possibly the first World Cup final I’ve ever watched, as I wasn’t a soccer fan before. As most Indo guys on those days, Italy was “our” team. Back on those days when we only have 2-3 TV stations, Serie A was probably the first foreign league shown in our country.

And for a soccer fan, who could’ve forgotten the penalty kick that sealed the fate of the Italians (and possibly the career of) of “the divine ponytail”, Roberto Baggio. Such an agony, I felt very upset that day (it’s actually quite weird if you think about it, you don’t know those guys, their winning/losing doesn’t really do anything much for your life, but yet why can one get so emotionally attached???). The Italian teams after that weren’t as good as that particular squad, they’ve never been the favourite to win anything after that. And it such a pain to watch a team that relied so much on their defensive system. This year’s team is different though, still one of the best defensive team (conceded only 2 goals during this tournament), but they can attack too, Pirlo’s set pieces are brilliant, Luca Toni aerial presence is intimidating, Grosso he’s really an underrated player, yep he’s the one that broke Australian heart, he dove to beat the Socceroos, scored a beautiful goal that killed the German Panzer on semi and today he nailed a final and decisive penalty against the France. Penalty shootout, the history is against them on this, but this morning, just as our Nike ad said, stuff history.
The only sad thing this morning, is that, Zidane has to retire in a disgraceful manner. As we bid farewell to one of the greatest player ever kick the ball, we hope that he would be remembered for his greatness, for his magic, not for his last minute madness. Quite a few legends have made this Cup their final too, the mighty Oliver Kahn, Robert Carlos, Luis Figo, Hidetoshi Nakata (our most admirable Asian representative on the game) and possibly others.

Actually this year’s world cup was less exciting compared to the previous ones, maybe it’s just my bad SBS reception.. Does everyone feel the same? There seems to be lacking spectacular goals, last World Cup, when Ronaldo “still can run”, he scored couple of brilliant goals, Korean’s Ahn goal was great, and Ronaldinho near half the field free kick against England… man that was just madness.
Now.. if we can wake up so early in the morning to watch such an “irrelevant” sport (well you do have to realize as christians that this IS NOT YOUR LIFE), what prevent us to wake up early to have a quiet time i wonder..