 
###

# COPYRIGHT

#  COPYRIGHT

The Unforgettable World Cup: 31 Days of Triumph and Heartbreak in Brazil

The Wall Street Journal

Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Smashwords Edition

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# Brazil's World Cup Was Never Simple, Always Irresistible

#  Brazil's World Cup Was Never Simple, Always Irresistible

_By Jason Gay_

_July 15, 2014_

They had a soccer tournament, and the best team won. If only the 2014 World Cup in Brazil were as simple as that.

Let's look backward--before Germany's extra-time victory over Argentina in the final; before the host country's agonizing, indelible 7-1 loss in the semifinals; before the individual greatness of Lionel Messi, Miroslav Klose, James Rodriguez, Neymar Jr. and Tim Howard. Before 20,000 fans jammed Grant Park in Chicago to watch the U.S. team. Before Luis Suarez launched his infamous incisors.

Let's go back to the beginning, to the original idea: a World Cup in Brazil.

The proposition was both romantic and contentious. The romance was easy: the world's most important soccer tournament in one of the world's most obsessive and influential soccer nations, for the first time since 1950. Brazil, winner of five Cups, home of Pele, its canary yellow jerseys an indisputable symbol of _futebol_ glory...

A World Cup in Brazil? It felt irresistible.

It's not as simple as that, however. Not now, not in the modern era, and as preparation and construction costs spiraled upward past $11 billion, the host country began to signal frustration and even regret.

Brazil needed so much--better infrastructure, education, health care, opportunity for economic advancement. How was a month-long soccer tournament possibly a wise expenditure? Protests rattled the streets, with outrage directed at both the Brazilian government and FIFA, soccer's hopelessly embattled governing agency.

The tournament began June 12 in Sao Paolo, with Brazil hosting Croatia. Uneasiness lingered, but it was easy to see why soccer wanted to be here: The soaring Arena Corinthians was awash in yellow, the mood anxious and jubilant, tens of millions watching at home. Some of this was familiar: green grass, white lines, 22 players on the field.

It looked like a soccer game, but it felt like the center of the universe. Brazil stayed that way for four weeks of beautiful madness, from the group stage through the final knockout game.

It quickly became clear that the planet's most popular sport was undergoing a startling transition. On day two, Spain--the defending champions, coming off a stretch as possibly the greatest national soccer team ever--was blistered 5-1 by the Netherlands. _La Roja_ would soon be swept out of the competition.

Surprising contenders emerged. Colombia. Costa Rica. Chile. In the second week, Mexico played Brazil to a brilliant 0-0 draw, assisted by the sticky hands of goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa.

The United States, meanwhile, was holding its own in a street fight. Before the tournament, the U.S. men had been given little chance. They'd been assigned to the "Group of Death" along with powerhouse Germany, Portugal, and Ghana, and their coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, had tried to limit expectations by reasonably claiming a World Cup title was "not realistic."

But in their opener versus Ghana, the U.S. scored thrillingly early and thrillingly late, delivering a 2-1 victory over a squad that had banished them from the previous two Cups. Was the Group of Death escapable?

Years from now, we will look at the records and see that in the 2014 World Cup, the United States men won a single game, lost two, and tied another. But that pedestrian-looking 1-2-1 offers little insight into the mania that accompanied the U.S. team's run in Brazil.

Soccer has long tried to make its case in America--it's by far the most popular sport among children; there's a growing domestic league in Major League Soccer; via the Internet, it's never been easier to follow the international game. But Brazil offered a moment in which all of that passion seemed to intertwine into something deeper, broader, unprecedented.

As the U.S. men fought on, television ratings reached record levels. Tens of thousands gathered in cities like Kansas City, Boston and Detroit to watch on big screens. Soldier Field, a citadel of American football, became a citadel of the world's version. From the beaches of Rio to the rainforest of Manaus, it was easy to find swarms of U.S. fans who had made the long trip to urge on the national team.

Their excitement did not resemble an impulse, fad or temporary affectation. A new generation had arrived. Soccer appears here to stay.

In the end, what gives the World Cup its heartbreaking edge is its ruthlessness--every team must go but one. The U.S. men evaded the Group of Death but lost in extra time to Belgium in the Round of 16. Then Belgium fell to Argentina. Brazil, clinging to the hope that an imperfect team could locate sudden perfection, was routed by Germany. In the final, before chancellor Angela Merkel and superfan Rihanna, Germany pushed a single extra-time goal past Argentina. After four weeks, it stood alone.

That was the end result, but this World Cup offered a far richer narrative. What follows here is a collection of The Wall Street Journal's best coverage from the 2014 tournament--from the early expectations to the final minutes inside Rio's fabled Maracana stadium. Like the Cup itself, the story changed day, ranging from the serious (Brazil's wariness as a host nation) to the absurd (Luis Suarez's expulsion after biting an Italian opponent).

The Journal dispatched reporters to every corner of the country. They chronicled the wild drama, on and off the field, along the way. There were late nights, early mornings, missed planes, lost cabs, one pickpocketing, and more than a few caipirinhas and steaks.

None of it will be forgotten. There is no country quite like Brazil, and no event quite like a World Cup--which was exactly the original idea.

###

# IN THIS BOOK

#  IN THIS BOOK

**FAREWELL, BRAZIL: REFLECTIONS ON THE CUP**

Portrait of a Meltdown: Brazil's Road to the Mineirao

The Craziest World Cup, Ever

Brazil Is Going to Be Just Fine

Counterpoint

**64 GAMES TO REMEMBER**

A Festival of 'Futebol'

**STARS & STORYLINES**

The Dutch Secret to Soccer Success: Field Hockey

For World Cup Champion Spain, the End Is Here

The Genius and the Madness of Luis Suarez

Colombia's Secret to Success: Pony Futbol

Why Isn't There Another Neymar?

Germany Forgoes Style for Silverware at the World Cup

**INSIDE TEAM USA 'S RUN**

Soccer, Made in America

Why I Hate American Soccer Fans

The Team With Four Captains

Is This Soccer's Moment in America?

Jurgen Klinsmann's Yoda

What Now for America and Soccer?

**THE WORLD 'S GAME ON DISPLAY**

At the World Cup, Citizenship Becomes a Complicated Issue

The Problem With World Cup Referees

The World Cup of Exhaustion

Goodbye, Tiki-Taka; Hello, Fast-Break Soccer

A World Cup That Doesn't Want Any of Its Matches to End

The Best (And Worst) Fans in Brazil

Soccer Goes Into Attack Mode

The Official World Cup Celebration Audit

**BRAZIL, UP CLOSE & PERSONAL**

Intense Verses Laid-Back: Sao Paulo vs. Rio

'Hey, Lettuce Hands!' and Other Brazilian Lingo

In Brazil, Girls Are Still Left on the Sidelines in Soccer

How the World Cup Became the Cup of Memes

Over $500 Million Later, Brazil's Maracana Is Still Cursed

**THE CUP AROUND THE WORLD**

It's a Matter of 'Goal!' vs. 'Golazo!'

Now in a TV Studio, Maradona Is Still Taking a Lot of Shots

The South Americans Sitting Out of the World Cup

Colombia, 20 Years After Escobar

Argentina's Soccer Win Helps Country Forget Woes--For Now

The World Agrees: Soccer Matches Should Be Free on TV

**ABOUT THIS BOOK**

###

# FAREWELL, BRAZIL, FOR NOW

###

# Portrait of a Meltdown: Brazil's road to the Mineirão

#  Portrait of a Meltdown: Brazil's road to the Mineirao

_By John Lyons_

_July 14, 2014_

Brazil's World Cup meltdown began just as the sun set. Pinks and oranges in the clouds over Mineirao stadium faded to gray. Floodlights burst on like stars. Then Germany scored. And scored again.

Someone said: "If Brazil comes back and wins, this will be one of the greatest games in World Cup history." But it wasn't. About 60 seconds later Germany scored again, and again and again, on its way to a 7-1 victory.

Inside the stadium, the Brazilian crowd raced through phases of grief. Disbelieving, they cheered their team on as if there was still a chance. Then, anger: red-faced security guards in orange outfits yelled obscenities at the field. Someone hurled a plastic cup half full of beer. Depression came next: Rows of Brazilian faces, some painted with little flags, turned forlorn.

Then giddiness took over. Brazilians cheered for Germany. They stood and chanted the bullfighter's "Ole!" as Germans played keep-away from the desperate Brazilians. Some giggled excitedly. Stadium volunteer William da Silva, a look-alike for Brazilian star Neymar, mugged for selfies with fans seeking mementos from the collapse of the world's most successful international soccer team.

Irony may seem a strange response for fans of the self-proclaimed "country of soccer" watching the legend of their superiority deflated on home soil, but it reigned as Brazil was booted from the World Cup it spent $11.5 billion to host and expected to win.

But Brazil had been on a harrowing emotional roller coaster for almost a year by that point; This was only its maddening nadir. The road to the Mineirao was paved with tear gas-soaked protests, fierce debates over the cost of stadiums, and tense obsession over whether the stadiums would even get built on time.

The collapse of the Seleçao was only the latest way the World Cup had exposed the enormous gaps in Brazil's aspirations and its ability to achieve them. It's easy to see why some in the crowd might see the team's historic failure as an absurd joke after everything the country had been through.

When Brazil won the right to host the Cup seven years earlier, then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said it would showcase a new Brazil rising in prestige and wealth amid a commodity boom. The country would not only win the Cup, but build a high-speed rail line to take fans to Rio to celebrate. Brazilians poured out of buildings in jubilation.

The bullet train never got built. In 2013, seething frustrations with the economy's unfulfilled promise boiled over in mass marches and clashes soaked in tear gas. By the time the Cup rolled around, the protests had fizzled out. Nothing much had changed, and glumness loomed.

On the morning of the opening game in Sao Paulo, it was hard to tell a World Cup was getting underway anywhere, much less down the road. Brazilians are known to hang streamers and paint their streets in the green and yellow of the country's flag at Cup time. There was almost none of that. On opening day, at the Itaquerao, Sao Paulo was cold, drizzly and flagless.

Tension seethed beneath the gloominess. A scuffle broke out between anti-Cup students and a Seleçao supporter in the Tatuape subway station. The protesters had occupied the subway, chanting "There Won't Be a Cup." Locals from working class Tatuape piled up at the station, unable to get to Cup parties.

A young Tatuape woman in a Brazil t-shirt, tears streaming down her face, pleaded with a bearded protester to "go away so we can use the metro and go where we need to go." A mob of protesters surrounded her, chanting "Nao Vai Ter Copa!"

A female protester in a black dress, stockings and boots burst from the crowd and knocked the woman down. Police drowned the place in tear gas, scattering everyone.

At the stadium, wild mood swings were already on display. I arrived as Brazilians, soccer fueling their patriotism, belted out the national anthem in deafening _a capella_. In the next moment they flashed to a grotesque chant about their president.

President Dilma Rousseff had appeared on a giant screen seated in a glass-walled skybox. Suddenly the multitudes boomed "Ei, Dilma, vai tomar no cu." (Hey, Dilma, go take it in the rear.) The epithet roared around the stadium like surf.

The crowd's makeup illustrated failures to improve equality in one of the world´s least equal societies. Brazil is among the most racially mixed countries on the planet, but there was hardly a black face in the stadium save the players and the hot dog vendors. Only a sliver of rich, white elites could afford tickets.

I'd slipped into the VIP seating at midfield. The section was a volatile mix of anti-Rousseff Sao Paulo business elites and the upper echelon of Ms. Rousseff's left-wing Worker's Party. The vulgar anti-Dilma cheer picked up again after a Neymar goal.

A woman in an elegant blue sweater joined in. A balding man in a windbreaker climbed over seats, shouting at the woman to do herself what she'd just told the president to try. "No, you!" he yelled as men restrained him. Marta Suplicy, Brazil's culture minister, stood and gave a frantic speech about Ms. Rousseff's merits, arms outstretched.

"Calma, calma," pleaded a man in a double-breasted blazer and yellow Brazil scarf. Disputes, many near violence, had already broken out in the section. Brazil's political divide was widening in real time at the World Cup.

The country´s emotional volatility was reflected in its team, which seemed to be playing not only for their sporting legacies but the health of the nation itself. At almost every game, players broke down in tears as the crowd sang the pregame anthem.

In a country where national identity and soccer are entwined, Brazilians expected the Seleçao to expunge the memory of their 1950 home World Cup loss to Uruguay, a defeat known as the "Maracanazo" that is still considered a national humiliation. Second place would be considered defeat. Adding to the pressure, many feared violent protests would return if the team lost early.

Brazil's coach, Luis Felipe Scolari, tried using the expectations as motivation. Before one game, the team watched video testimonies from Brazilian children who'd survived a mudslide. Their happiness rode on the outcome of the game.

It was too much. The Seleçao seemed to be cracking up by its first knock-out game against Chile. At halftime, team spokesman Rodrigo Paiva socked a Chilean player during a scuffle in the locker room tunnel and was later suspended for it.

Then Brazilian players collapsed weeping when the game went to a penalty kick shootout. Captain Thiago Silva was inconsolable, first sitting on soccer ball and, later with his head in his coach's belly.

Brazil won that game. But the scare of near-elimination almost sent them over the edge.

Meantime, the mood of Brazilian fans had finally perked up. Brazil defeated Colombia 2-1 in a bruising game--Neymar was knocked out of the tournament with a cracked vertebra--but World Cup excitement had taken hold. Hundreds of thousands of revelers packed Copacabana beach after the game in a wild party that raged even after news of the injury spread.

When the Seleçao took the field against Germany on July 8, the country and the team were in an supercharged emotional feedback loop. The anthem sounded loud as a 747 engine. During its singing, the team held up Neymar's number 10 jersey. It looked strangely small, like a child's.

Then it was over. I went into Belo Horizonte looking for signs of chaos. Experts had predicted a return to protests if the national team lost, and they'd lost big.

Instead I found a bacchanalian party in the city's hip Savassi neighborhood - a scene of heavy protests a year earlier. This time, young men and women kissed and groped each other openly on street corners. Crowds drank and spilled out of overfilled bars. Inebriated groups draped in flags staggered around singing Brazil cheers.

Hours after the national team had come undone, people seemed over it - a sign, perhaps, that Brazil has begun to see itself more realistically and is ready to tackle its problems on and off the soccer field. That would be a good thing: The emotional roller coaster went on too long and didn't take Brazil anywhere.

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# The Craziest World Cup, Ever

#  The Craziest World Cup, Ever

_By Joshua Robinson_

_July 13, 2014_

Rio de Janeiro--I covered the demolition of Spain. I witnessed the humiliation of Brazil. I saw the Luiz Suarez bite, the Arjen Robben dive, The James Rodriguez "giant insect" incident, The Miguel Herrera celebration, the Tim Howard 16-save game and the moment Neymar had his back broken. During the 2014 World Cup, I only attended 12 games. But for some reason, every one of them went bonkers.

What's strange about being at a match in these kinds of moments is that the depth of the madness you've witnessed doesn't hit you right away. You remember the noise. You feel brief disorientation, followed by a short pause before your synapses begin to fire and connect.

You always remember the things people say around you. "Did he just bite him?" someone asked after Uruguay's Luis Suarez crashed into Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini.

During the Massacre of the Mineirao, Brazil's 7-1 dismantling by the Germans, one colleague couldn't believe that soccer could allow this to happen. With every goal, he asked, "Does that one count?"

My 12 matches account for only 18.75% of the contests at this World Cup. But I somehow saw 44 goals, which is 25.7% of the tournament's total. Part of the reason for this is the wide-open attacking style of play we've seen in Brazil. And part of it must be something they put in the water in the city of Salvador. In four games at the Arena Fonte Nova, I saw 20 goals.

I can't say I was disappointed by the offensive fireworks. _Merci Les Bleus_ for demolishing Switzerland. _Dank u Oranje_ for lighting up Spain. And Germany--for what I watched you do to Portugal and Brazil, I can only say I'm glad you were gentle with the U.S.

In addition to these scoring deluges, I was also treated to extraordinary shot-stopping performances by goalkeepers. I didn't think anyone could do a better impersonation of a ball-sucking magnet than Guillermo Ochoa during Mexico's 0-0 victory against Brazil--it was definitely a victory. Except then I saw Tim Howard against Belgium. With every surefire Belgian attack, he dug out another save, and followed it by howling at his defenders.

The U.S. lost that Howard game, of course. But the goalkeeper still emerged as a hero. If that's not a sign that Americans are finally getting this sport, then I don't know what is.

The strangest game of all is one that I nearly missed.

After scrambling to get on a flight from Recife to Natal, which turned out to be a rocky little turboprop plane, I hopped into a cab at the airport 90 minutes before kickoff. The driver, roughly 12 years old, knew I had to make it. He pulled on a couple of special driving sleeves (so he wouldn't get sunburn?) and floored it. He went close to 100 miles an hour for as long as he could without slipping into lanes of oncoming trucks. And once we hit traffic in Natal's steamy downtown, the cowboy at the wheel started running red lights. But he got me there, with 30 minutes to spare.

All I could think was, "Please let this game be a quiet one! Couple of early goals, no controversy...."

For 80 minutes, that's what I got. It stayed 0-0. Then Suarez bit someone.

_Get me a rewrite!_

From the media section of a soccer stadium, you miss the little details. So you have to discover them on a television screen like everybody else. I never saw the bite marks on Chiellini up close, even as the Italian tugged at his jersey to show them to the referee. I never saw Germany coach Jogi Low pick his nose. And from way up in the press seats, I never saw the Japanese-horror-movie insect perched on the arm of Colombia's James Rodriguez after he scored a goal. I was far more worried about the egg-sized moth sitting quietly on the back of the guy sitting next to me. (He never noticed it and I wasn't about to anger that beast.)

Another thing you learn is to appreciate the difficulty of real-time refereeing in a World Cup game. The tackle on Neymar that turned Juan Camilo Zuniga into Brazil's Public Enemy No. 1 didn't look like a vertebra-crunching knee to the back. Even as Neymar went off on a stretcher, there was no sense around the stadium that his tournament was done. Everyone was far more preoccupied by Brazil hanging onto its slender lead.

If there's anything that all soccer writers hate, regardless of nationality, it's a late goal. I'm looking at you guys, Wesley Sneijder and Klaas Jan Huntelaar, or as I like to call you: the human "delete" keys. They both scored in the final six minutes to overcome a 1-0 deficit against Mexico in the round of 16. The Dutch were fun to watch at this tournament, but I'm not cool with those guys yet.

I suppose it goes without saying that I was also present for Croatia vs. Mexico. You know--the game in which Mexico's coach, Miguel Herrera, celebrated the win by maniacally tackling people.

The games aren't the only thing about this World Cup that was disorienting. Around two weeks ago in the airport in Recife, I actually lost track of where I was. Staring at an "arrivals" board full of Brazilian city names, I was sure I could have flown in from pretty much any of them just 15 minutes before. Salvador? Maybe. Belem? That was an airport I'd seen. Natal? Yeah, maybe Natal. It was only when I overheard someone say the word Fortaleza that it clicked. Fortaleza, that's where I was!

Because this tournament was spread out between 12 cities in this enormous nation, I had to make 19 flights (and one seven-hour bus ride). In retrospect, it was insanity. No one should fly that much without earning an airline salary.

But all of this set me up to see nearly every lunatic moment of this tournament. For that I'm incredibly grateful.

And that was before I went to the final, all 120 manic minutes of it.

###

# Brazil Is Going to Be Just Fine

#  Brazil Is Going to Be Just Fine

_By Matthew Futterman_

_July 9, 2014_

Sao Paulo--Guess what happened in Brazil on Wednesday?

The sun came up. People went to work. They drove taxis, opened grocery stores, clicked on their computers to handle legal and financial matters. Doctors healed the sick. Social workers tackled the problems of the vast poverty in this country of some 200 million. Life went on.

Guess what didn't happen? Cities didn't burn. Mass riots didn't erupt. As far as we can tell, no soccer fans threw themselves off buildings because their beloved Seleçao was embarrassed by Germany, 7-1, in Tuesday's World Cup semifinal.

In the cruel light of day, it still feels strange to write "Germany 7, Brazil 1." That kind of result doesn't happen at this level of soccer. Brazil last lost a competitive game on home soil in 1975. If I were a native, I'd be shaken, at a loss to describe the debacle that went down in the mining city of Belo Horizonte.

Make no mistake: The defeat to Germany, to borrow U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann's favorite phrase, was "a real bummer." The people here love their footy as much as any country loves any sport. The government declares holidays when the national team plays. Streets empty, and I mean _empty_ --like you can pitch a tent in the middle of a main thoroughfare and not get hit.

Still, don't buy the narrative that this loss is going to leave some indelible national scar on a country so desperately trying to thrive in a lot of areas that have nothing to do with soccer. That idea is rather demeaning to the Brazilians I've met, who just might be the warmest collection of souls I've come across.

There was the woman at the eyeglass store here in Sao Paulo who refused to accept money for the eyeglass case she gave me after I had lost mine. There were the college students in Natal who offered me a tour of the city and a ride back to my hotel in the middle of the night when there was no media shuttle in sight following the U.S. win over Ghana.

There was the rabbi who, 30 seconds after meeting me, insisted I go to a Sabbath dinner at one of his congregants' homes. (I did, and the matzo ball soup was awesome). There are countless souls who have stood patiently with me on the street, waiting as I fumbled through my pocket Portuguese dictionary, searching for the right word to complete a dumb question, when surely they had something better to do.

I've been here a month. That hardly qualifies me as an expert in Brazilian culture. My sample size is small and somewhat limited to hotels, restaurants, soccer stadiums and running paths next to beaches in Rio, Natal, Recife and a few other host cities. I know about the crime and the intense poverty.

But I also know this is an amazing, diverse country. Fly four hours into the Amazon from Sao Paulo, and the people look completely different from those in the country's commercial center. In Salvador on the northeast coast you might as well be in West Africa. In every city, people of every shade of black, brown and white skin populate areas that are rich and poor.

It's a country of stunning physical beauty and vast natural resources. Rush-hour traffic makes Los Angeles arteries look like country drives, a sure sign that the place needs some infrastructure upgrades but also that there are a lot hardworking folks who want to make tomorrow better than today.

In other words, Brazil is a lot more than a canary jersey and an obsession with soccer.

The collapse against Germany will surely spark some national soul-searching about how Brazil cultivates and develops its next generation of soccer stars. The country has a huge talent pool to draw from, but accidents don't happen in sports anymore. Winning at the highest level today takes not just talent but money, training and a cohesive strategy.

"When you think about it," a 20-something Brazilian in one of those ubiquitous yellow jerseys said to me in a bar last night, "it's kind of funny. I mean, seven goals. It's funny, right?"

I'm going to bet that Brazil as a whole is going to be just fine after this. Bummed out for a bit, sure, but ultimately fine. In a lot of ways, it already is.

###

# Counterpoint

#  Counterpoint

_By Patricia Kowsmann_

My very smart and sensitive colleague Matthew Futterman just wrote Brazilians will be just fine after Tuesday's historical loss at the World Cup.

As he pointed out, life seems to go on in this country filled with amazing people, ambitions and, of course, problems. Most of them way bigger than soccer.

But as a Brazilian, I see something Matthew simply can't as a foreigner. People here don't only love their footy as much as any country anywhere loves any sport, because soccer is an intrinsic part of Brazil's identity. For a Brazilian, losing that game was like losing his identity card, not knowing it can ever be recovered.

That identity, in many ways, hasn't been created by us. After winning five World Cups and producing talents like Pele, people came to associate soccer with Brazil. That fact is clear every time a Brazilian goes abroad. I don't remember any instances when I did and people didn't mention soccer when I said my nationality. As a matter of fact, some wouldn't even know Brazil existed if it weren't for soccer.

I can't think of any other country so universally associated with one single sport. And that has its weight. And it is heavy.

Brazilians, of course, have used and abused soccer to reinforce this almost unbreakable--right now almost broken--link. Here, being good at soccer erases a lot of bad things. A new corruption scandal has emerged? The economy is souring? Brazil is again ranking low in education, quality of life and safety? Well, at least we know we are good at one thing: soccer. We only got a few medals at the Olympics? Well, it's OK because we are the best in soccer.

But after Tuesday's loss, it will be long before we can brag about ourselves again. Matthew doesn't know this, but on the contrary to Americans, who proudly raise their flags many times a year at various events, Brazilians don't. The World Cup is probably the only event we ever do it. With all the problems Brazil has, soccer is a rare object of collective pride.

Or was. It isn't by chance that the most used word to describe what happened Tuesday is "shame." Until we recover this part of our identity or find a new one to replace it, we will be soul-searching, literally. Brazilians have gone on with their lives, but they surely feel empty inside.

###

# 64 GAMES TO REMEMBER

###

# A Festival of 'Futebol'

#  A Festival of 'Futebol'

_By David Marino-Nachison_

_July 13, 2014_

No tournament captures the imagination of the world's soccer fans quite like the World Cup. Its quadrennial scarcity, perilous qualification process and draining intensity—to win, teams must play seven matches in a month's time—make it a unique counterpoint to drawn-out club competitions.

The 2014 World Cup, which brought the event to Brazil for the first time since 1950, was one for the ages. There were star performances, breakout sensations, dramatic finishes and goals aplenty – but also profound disappointment, for the host Brazilians and, ultimately, every team but one.

Here, we'll recap the tournament from beginning—when Brazil squared off against Croatia in São Paolo on Thursday, June 12—to end.

**Favorites perform in the group stage, but upstarts make noise**

The World Cup group stage is like a buffet, a seemingly never-ending selection of high-stakes matches between teams from different continents with vastly different degrees of skill, preparation and expectation. In Brazil, it proffered stirring drama, end-to-end shootouts and, for some teams, early trips home.

**Group A:** Brazil opened with a tense 3-1 win over a determined Croatian team in which Brazil allowed an early own goal and won a controversial penalty. Officiating was a talking point again when Mexico was denied two apparent goals against Cameroon, though they still managed a 1-0 victory.

Mexico then held off Brazil with resolute goalkeeping from Guillermo Ochoa, their match finishing scoreless. Mexico won advancement with a 3-1 win over Croatia on the final day of group matches, but Brazil's commanding 4-1 defeat of Cameroon sealed first place on goal differential for the hosts.

**Group B:** The Netherlands opened with fireworks, avenging a 2010 final loss by dismantling Spain 5-1. It was the worst opening-game loss by a defending champion in the tournament's history. Chile dispatched Australia in businesslike fashion, winning 3-1.

The Netherlands and Australia then produced a 3-2 thriller, each team scoring equalizing goals before Memphis Depay notched the Dutch winner. That result, and Chile's 2-0 defeat of Spain, meant the 2010 winner was out after two games.

Consequently, the last day of group matches—Spain defeated Australia 3-0 and the Netherlands won 2-0 over Chile—did not affect advancement. The Dutch and Chileans proceeded in first and second place, respectively.

**Group C:** Colombia was a pretournament favorite even without injured star Radamel Falcao on its roster, and they opened in fine form with a 3-0 win over Greece. The Ivory Coast defeated Japan 2-1 to start their campaign, collecting two goals in two minutes to seal the win.

In the next set of games, Colombia defeated the Ivory Coast 2-1, while Japan and Greece played a scoreless draw. Colombia's advancement was secure, but a spot in the elimination round remained in play. In the last set of matches, first-place Colombia's 4-1 dismantling of Japan coupled with Greece's 2-1 win over the Ivory Coast sealed it for the Greeks.

**Group D:** In the "Group of Champions," so named because three of four teams had won the tournament previously, Costa Rica produced one of the tournament's first big surprises with a 3-1 victory over Uruguay during which the latter team's star, Luis Suárez, was held out. Italy defeated England 2-1 in its first match.

In the next pair of matches, Suárez sandwiched goals around a score by England's Wayne Rooney, eliminating the English. Costa Rica then shocked Italy with a 1-0 win, booking a trip to the next round.

Costa Rica's third game, a scoreless draw with England, won them first place. Uruguay managed advancement with a 1-0 win over Italy that produced one of the tournament's enduring controversies: After the match, Suárez was ruled to have intentionally bitten the shoulder of an Italian defender. FIFA suspended him for nine matches, including the rest of the World Cup.

**Group E:** Switzerland started its campaign in dramatic fashion, defeating Ecuador 2-1 on a headed goal in the match's dying moments. France dispatched Honduras, getting two goals from Karim Benzema on its way to a 3-0 win.

The French run continued in their second match as they rampaged past Switzerland 5-2. Ecuador's 2-1 win over Honduras eliminated the Central Americans, setting up an all-important final match for the group's last spot in the next round.

That went to the Swiss, who by beating Ecuador 2-1 left the South Americans the only team from the continent not to advance to the knockout stage. France kept its scoring spree alive, beating Honduras 3-0 to wrap up first place in the group.

**Group F:** Argentina used a goal from superstar Lionel Messi to help defeat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-1 to start their campaign. Iran and Nigeria played to the tournament's first tie, a scoreless draw.

In the second set of group matches, Iran used a stout defense to hold off Argentina for 90 minutes – before Messi scored in extra time to claim a second consecutive 1-0 victory. Nigeria, meanwhile, kept its hopes alive with a 1-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The last set of matches brought a third consecutive win for Argentina – and two more goals for Messi – in a wild 3-2 defeat of Nigeria. Bosnia-Herzegovina beat Iran 3-1, but it wasn't enough to stop Nigeria from advancing along with the group-winning Argentines.

**Group G:** Germany started play with a decisive 4-0 victory over Portugal, which played much of the match shorthanded after defender Pepe was ejected in the first half. The United States avenged two consecutive World Cup losses to Ghana, winning 2-1 on a late header by substitute defender John Anthony Brooks.

The next two group matches were dramatic draws that ended 2-2: Germany and Ghana played a thriller, all four goals coming in a wide-open second half, while Cristiano Ronaldo salvaged a point – and Portugal's dreams of advancement—with a cross to goalscorer Varela in the final moments of injury time.

Germany defeated the United States 1-0 on the last day of group play, clinching first place. But Portugal's 2-1 win over Ghana couldn't overturn previous results, and the Americans advanced.

**Group H:** Favored Belgium overcame a first-half penalty to defeat Algeria 2-1. Russia recovered from a second-half goalkeeping blunder to pull even with South Korea, their match ending 1-1.

Algeria then exploded against the South Koreans, winning 4-2 with a commanding performance in which four different players scored. Belgium managed a 1-0 win over Russia when substitute Divock Origi scored just minutes from the final whistle.

Algeria and Russia played to a 1-1 draw while Belgium defeated South Korea 1-0, leaving the three-win Belgians in first place and the Algerians in second when group play concluded.

**Stars come to play in the Round of 16**

The all-or-nothing portion of the competition began with the hosts facing a scare. Brazil needed penalty kicks to end Chile's run; after the match, which included 30 minutes of scoreless overtime, ended 1-1, Brazil won a the penalty kick shootout 3-2.

Colombia moved on with a 2-0 defeat of Uruguay behind a pair of goals from sensation James Rodriguez. His first, during which he used his chest to control a headed ball before volleying home with his left foot from atop the goal box, was one of the outstanding individual efforts of the tournament. Suárez, whose tournament had ended, could only watch.

The Netherlands beat Mexico 2-1, scoring once in the 88th minute and the winner in extra time on a disputed penalty. That ended the run of Mexican coach Miguel Herrera, whose energetic sideline displays made him a fan favorite.

Costa Rica continued its storybook run, winning 5-3 in a penalty shootout after Greece leveled the match at 1-1 in added time. The Central American nation, which has lately become a routine qualifier to the World Cup, achieved its best-ever performance by advancing.

France beat Nigeria 2-0, moving ahead thanks to a towering header from midfielder Paul Pogba and a late own goal. Nigeria, the first African team to reach the knockout stages of three World Cups, would go home, while the French advanced.

Germany needed extra time to defeated Algeria. All three goals, including the eventual winner by Mesut Özil, came in the overtime period, the match ending 2-1 to set up a quarterfinal match against France.

Messi was instrumental again in Argentina's 1-0 defeat of Switzerland. He didn't score, but he laid the ball off for Angel Di Maria to finish near the end of overtime, claiming the win.

The United States was eliminated by Belgium 2-1. After narrowly missing a chance to win at the end of a scoreless regulation during which Belgium peppered Tim Howard's goal to no avail, the Europeans scored two goals in overtime and held off a late American charge.

**Quarter-, semifinals marked by a defining injury – and a historic loss**

As the pressure increased, Germany sent France home with a 1-0 win. A first-half goal from defender Mats Hummels was enough for the Germans, who were able to contain the French attack that had been potent through much of the tournament.

Brazil then defeated Colombia 2-1. The match was marred, however, by a late foul on Neymar by Juan Zuniga that knocked the high-flying attacker out of the game – and, ultimately, the tournament, after it was learned that he had suffered a fractured vertebra.

Gonzalo Higuain did all the scoring that was needed for Argentina to defeat Belgium. His eighth-minute goal held up, and the 1-0 win was enough to move the South American team along even without a goal or assist from Messi.

Costa Rica's good fortune finally ran out. They succumbed to the Dutch on penalties after a scoreless 120 minutes. Dutch coach Louis van Gaal made one of the tournament's most unusual coaching moves, bringing in substitute goalkeeper Tim Krul for the shootout; he saved two shots, and his team won 4-3.

After weeks of dramatic and exciting soccer, the semifinals brought together four powerful teams, each having produced quality performances during the tournament. Nobody, however, could have predicted what happened in Belo Horizonte on July 8: Germany ran out to a five-goal first-half lead over hosts Brazil, who lacked Neymar's influence and never looked engaged. The match ended 7-1 – Brazil's goal was the game's last – and the third German goal only added insult to injury: The scorer, Miroslav Klose, scored his 16th career World Cup goal, wresting the all-time record from Brazilian hero Ronaldo.

Germany's Miroslav Klose celebrates a goal with teammate Toni Kroos. (Getty)

The second semifinal was a more cautious affair, both teams seemingly determined not to end up like the Brazilians. It ended scoreless after 120 minutes, Argentina outlasting the Netherlands 4-2 in the penalty shootout.

There was, however, one other game to be played before Argentina would meet Germany: the third-place contest between Brazil and the Netherlands. Played a day before the final, the Dutch ran out to a two-goal first-half lead before adding a third to claim a 3-0 victory.

**In the Final, a Late Winner Seals the Title**

The final pit Germany, a three-time winner whose last title was in 1990, against Argentina, whose second championship came in 1986. They faced off on Sunday, July 13, in Rio de Janeiro's famed Estadio do Maracanã for the ultimate prize.

No European team had ever won a World Cup in the Americas, and so the Germans faced not only history but also a key loss after attacker Sami Khedira was pulled from the lineup during warmups because of fitness concerns. Argentina, meanwhile, was playing on its own continent but without the support of the Brazilians, who seemed to adopt the German team instead of their rivals.

The match was largely a tight, tense affair. Both teams found a handful of chances behind the other team's defense, but neither could capitalize: Gonzalo Higuain might have scored on an early defensive error by Germany in the first half but dragged his low shot just wide, while Argentina's goalkeeper Sergio Romero rebuffed several German attempts on his goal.

An overtime period seemed inevitable and, sure enough, the teams lined up for an added 30 minutes. But with a penalty shootout looking likely in the 113th minute, Germany suddenly struck. A late rush down the left wing by André Schürrle found Mario Götze in the penalty box between two defenders, and Götze deftly brought the ball to his left foot with his chest and turned an acrobatic volley into Romero's goal.

With moments left to play, a foul gave Messi a free kick in German's end. His shot flew high and harmlessly into the crowd, and Germany was crowned champion soon after.

**Messi Leads Post-Tournament Awards**

Argentina's Lionel Messi, who was instrumental in his team's run to the final, was awarded the Golden Ball as the tournament's outstanding player. Thomas Mueller, of Germany, and the Netherlands' Arjen Robben, were second and third, respectively.

The Golden Boot, for top scorer, went to James Rodriguez of Colombia. Mueller, of Germany, and Brazil's Neymar followed the six-goal Colombian.

Manuel Neuer, the German goalkeeper, earned the Golden Glove as the tournament's best at his position.

France's midfielder Paul Pogba, 21, took home the Young Player award.

Colombia won the Fair Play Award as the team to advance to the knockout phase and carry the best overall disciplinary record.

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# STARS & STORYLINES

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# The Dutch Secret to Soccer Success: Field Hockey

#  The Dutch Secret to Soccer Success: Field Hockey

_By Jonathan Clegg_

_June 17, 2014_

When the Netherlands opened its World Cup campaign with a shocking 5-1 defeat of defending champion Spain last week, it did more than send a seismic jolt through this tournament.

It also served as a glorious reminder that when the Dutch are on their game, they can make the best teams in the world look like they're playing in wooden clogs.

How a nation with roughly half the land mass of Indiana became a powerhouse in international soccer has been variously attributed to the country's superior coaching set-up, its progressive politics and even its low-lying topography, which helped to foster a possession-oriented game. But it may be that what makes the Netherlands such a fearsome football opponent is its long history of success in a decidedly less celebrated endeavor: Field hockey.

Last weekend, as millions of soccer fans tuned in to the opening weekend of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, devotees of field hockey were captivated by the closing stages of the FIH Hockey World Cup in the Netherlands. The Dutch women's team was crowned world champions for a record seventh time, while the men's team finished as silver medalists. Those results maintained a proud tradition of hockey success in the Netherlands, one that stretches back to the 1960s and which has exerted a profound influence on Dutch soccer ever since.

Manager Louis van Gaal, whose team faces Australia Wednesday, has two former professional field-hockey players on his coaching staff in Brazil. "If you look back over many years, we can say [field hockey] has had a big impact on the Dutch game," said former Netherlands star Edgar Davids.

It may come as a surprise to learn that a country that has produced some of soccer's most sublime talents--from Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten to Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben--is quietly indebted to a sport less popular in the U.S. than Ultimate Frisbee. Moreover, while both sports feature a ball, a net and 22 players running up and down a field, there don't appear to be many other similarities. Hockey, after all, involves moving at full speed while controlling a small ball with a long stick. It is primarily a game of hand-eye coordination.

But a basic overview of field hockey begins to explain how it has informed the Dutch approach to soccer. For starters, a hockey pitch is a little more than 54,000 square feet, or about 70% of a standard soccer pitch, which puts an outsize value on economical motion. The use of sticks further constricts the space available to each player, meaning that expert close control and intelligent off-the-ball movement are the game's key qualities.

It is also a sport in which the ball rarely leaves the ground. Rules to protect player safety mean any ball lifted above the knee can be penalized, which means advancing toward goal is achieved almost entirely by rapid passing combinations and speedy dribbling. Every player must be equally comfortable in possession, which is why seamlessly switching positions has long been one of the sport's essential strategies.

If all that sounds oddly familiar, it's because those have been the fundamental characteristics of Dutch soccer since the 1970s, when a team led by Cruyff dazzled fans with their mastery of the ball, quick passing moves and nonstop movement.

Marc Lammers, a former coach of the Dutch women's hockey team, says that it's no exaggeration to say that the revolutionary style which came to be known as Total Football had its roots in the country's hockey fields.

"Hockey in Holland at that time was all about speed, creativity and individual skills. They interchanged positions constantly," he said. "Dutch hockey has brought a lot of innovation and football has learned from it."

Dutch soccer has also drawn more direct lessons from field hockey. The tactic of "pressing," which was arguably the most radical aspect of Total Football, had long since been a hallmark of top-level hockey, where limits on physical contact force teams to pursue turnovers and interceptions by pressuring opponents high up the field.

Legendary field-hockey coach Horst Wein says that generations of Dutch soccer coaches have looked to the sport for inspiration, adding that Cruyff regularly attended the Dutch national hockey team's games while coaching at Ajax Amsterdam.

"He wasn't just there to enjoy the matches," Wein said. "He took whatever he saw and applied it to his teams."

The Dutch aren't the only nation to have drawn inspiration from the hockey pitch. In 2006, the German Football Federation appointed a former national hockey coach, Bernhard Peters, as a technical consultant to overhaul the country's youth set-up.

Others have looked to field hockey for tactical innovation. Before the 1978 World Cup, Argentina coach Cesar Luis Menotti attended a training camp held by the Pakistan hockey team, whose virtuoso wing play made them the world's dominant side at the time. Three months later, Menotti's Argentina were crowned world champions.

"He was very interested in Pakistan's use of passing triangles and give-and-go combinations," said Shiv Jagday, a former coach of the U.S. men's national hockey team. "He even sent them a thank-you note after Argentina won the World Cup."

For all that, there may be no coach in soccer history who has been as mesmerized by hockey as Van Gaal. The Dutch national team coach is so convinced of the tactical crossover that exists between the two sports that he has two former hockey players on his Netherlands coaching staff.

Team manager Hans Jorritsma was a member of the Dutch hockey team at the 1976 Olympics, while Max Reckers was pro hockey player before he was hired by Van Gaal as a performance analyst. He has already agreed to join Van Gaal's staff at Manchester United after the tournament.

"Van Gaal is someone who is always looking to get a 2% improvement in his team," said Lammers. "So of course he wants to know why Holland is always winning the women's Hockey World Cup and the men are always in the top three [in the world rankings.] He is always watching other sports and looking at their processes."

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# For World Cup Champion Spain, the End Is Here

#  For World Cup Champion Spain, the End Is Here

_By Joshua Robinson_

_June 22, 2014_

When Spain's six years of international soccer dominance began six years ago, Diego Costa was a 19-year-old striker from northeastern Brazil, finding his way in the Spanish professional game. He belonged to Atletico Madrid, but the club was loaning him out to teams around Spain, hoping they could hone him into a game-changing threat.

By this summer, a year after turning his back on Brazil to play for Spain, the 25-year-old Costa was supposed to be La Roja's newest, not-so-secret weapon. Instead, he underperformed and came in for much of the blame during its World Cup fiasco. Head coach Vicente del Bosque refused to single him out, but the Spanish press did.

"We don't have any excuses," del Bosque said after Spain was eliminated earlier this week. "We didn't meet the standards expected of us, though I would like to say that the team showed character."

Costa's case was set to be one of the stories of the tournament. Not only had Spain effectively recruited one of the most dangerous forwards in Europe this season--only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo scored more goals in La Liga--but it had also taken him away from one of its biggest potential rivals, Brazil. This was the equivalent of the Texas Longhorns plucking the best high-school running back right out of Oklahoma.

It was all the more significant because neither Spain nor Brazil has had a killer No. 9 in several years.

Spain was prepared to go with Fernando Torres (a bust at Chelsea) or a so-called "false 9″--a midfielder who circles areas on the verge of offside. Brazil's top choice, meanwhile, is 30. And Fred doesn't excite fans quite like a Ronaldo or Romario.

The problem was that Costa's style never quite meshed with Spain's. He was a middleweight boxer in a team of 5-foot-7 artists. Spain was so steeped in its quick-passing, death-by-a-thousand-cuts _tiki-taka_ style that the players in the front six were almost interchangeable--del Bosque wouldn't even give his team the lineup until two hours before a game.

Of course, when a team concedes seven goals in two games, it has more problems than just its striker.

Age was a factor, with Xavi Hernandez, Iker Casillas, Andres Iniesta and Xabi Alonso all hitting the twilight of their international careers. And there were questions raised about the squad's attitude. Just this week, as La Roja prepared for its final, meaningless game against Australia, del Bosque gave Fabregas a public dressing down.

Still, Costa was the unknown in the team. He was the only outfield player in the group who had never appeared in a competitive game for Spain.

In the opening 5-1 defeat to the Netherlands, Costa lasted 62 minutes, during which he managed two shots (neither on target) and the lowest passing accuracy of any Spanish starter. Then, in the 2-0 loss to Chile, which eliminated La Roja, Costa lasted just two minutes longer. He had 21 touches of the ball, according to WhoScored, nine fewer than his own goalkeeper.

Before the World Cup, even his teammates expressed some doubts that he could fit in.

"As soon as they win the ball back, Atletico Madrid, they don't even look," midfielder Cesc Fabregas said. "They just lob over the defense and this guy is quicker than anyone--he's a monster--and he will just run and score. That's how they see it. In Spain, we don't think like that."

Alonso, too, pointed out that the situations Costa thrives in don't occur often in Spain's games. "He loves to have space in front of him and to run to that space and to get that ball," he said before the World Cup. "That's not going to happen with the national team many times."

Costa is just one piece of a murky future for Spain. Certainly, La Roja's youth teams are the envy of Europe. With youngsters such as Isco, Alvaro Morata, and Thiago Alcantara, Spain won the 2013 under-21 European Championships and reached the quarterfinals of that year's under-20 World Cup.

But how often does success at the youth level immediately translate to the senior game? Consider that the last country to win the under-20 World Cup, or its precursor the World Youth Championship, and appear in the final of the senior World Cup within five years was Brazil, which won the former in 1993 and the World Cup in 1994.

So is it possible that this was one exceptional moment in Spain's history, a generation of players that can't be replicated? For now, the team refuses to look that far ahead.

"We must not make snap decisions on the basis of what has happened here," del Bosque said. "We played two games and were not able to overcome our rivals. The Netherlands and Chile were better than us on the day."

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# The Genius and the Madness of Luis Suárez

#  The Genius and the Madness of Luis Suárez

_By Joshua Robinson_

_June 25, 2014_

Natal, Brazil _—_ A day after Luis Suárez allegedly bit an opponent in one of the most talked-about incidents in recent World Cup history, the Uruguayan team couldn't understand why anyone was still discussing it.

In fact, mention it to the players, and they're not even sure what you're referring to. Asked about the bite heard around the world during a news conference on Wednesday, defender Diego Lugano said, "What incident?"

Once he remembered Tuesday's little fracas—the clash that saw Suárez allegedly sink his teeth into Italy's Giorgio Chiellini during Uruguay's 1-0 win—Lugano went on the attack. "It makes me very [upset]," he said, "because yesterday Uruguay had a historic win against a power in world football and in one play, there was physical contact...and the world press talks about something that's completely irrelevant."

But Suárez is never irrelevant. What makes the 27-year-old Uruguayan star so compelling is his combination of world-beating talent and inexplicable moments of madness. He has bitten opponents, punched them and cheated them out of goals. He is also among the most devastating strikers in the world. It's all part of the same package.

"The striker's football is the football of the streets," Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger said. "He's the guy who tries to push you, who plays on the edge of the rules. Suárez is an example of a player who wasn't given a classical football education."

That explains a lot about Suárez's style: His biggest asset may be his instinct. He has a tendency to crop up all over the final third of the field, not quite like a classic center forward who lives in the penalty area and never a full-time wide player who cuts in from the flanks. He can't be called a playmaking No. 10, either—his runs into the box are too frequent and incisive for that. Instead, he lives on speed and killer intuition, letting them take him wherever he can wreak the most havoc.

Players like Suárez are naturally magnets for contact. So it is no surprise that Suárez has been among the 10 most fouled players in the English Premier League three years running.

This season, he led the league in goals, with 31 in 33 appearances, and was second in assists with 12. His searing contribution lifted Liverpool to second place in the league. Playing alongside him in England, the likes of Steven Gerrard, Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling nearly won the title. Without him, that same cast of characters carried England to last place in its group and an early flight home.

Perhaps these are the "competitive reasons," as Lugano suggested, behind Britain's obsession with Suárez.

"That the British press persecute Suárez, everybody knows," Lugano said. "It seems that the persecution sells newspapers in England."

Indeed, the questions from the Uruguayan media barely touched on the subject. They focused on Saturday's second-round match against Colombia—a game that Uruguay might have to play without Suárez.

Uruguay's Luis Suarez, left, after his fateful collision with Italy's Giorgio Chiellini. (Getty/AFP)

FIFA's disciplinary committee met Wednesday evening to discuss the case. It was expected to announce a decision quickly, so that any appeal—should there be one—could be handled in time for the round of 16.

The president of the Uruguayan soccer federation, Wilmar Valdez, traveled to Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday with two lawyers to submit a 17-page document laying out Suarez's defense. Speaking to the Uruguayan newspaper El Observador, he said there was no conclusive evidence of any wrongdoing.

"What we ask is that there is equanimity," Valdez added. "There is much international pressure, from all sectors of the press. It's a real injustice because you are judging based on that and not what really happened."

How long any possible suspension might last is unclear, but FIFA said that the disciplinary committee would determine the scope of this case. In other words, it will be free to consider Suárez's past behavior. That includes biting Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic in 2013 (which came with a 10- game suspension) and using his teeth on PSV Eindhoven's Otman Bakkal in 2010 (seven-game suspension).

Even without those incidents of spontaneous biting, which occurred while playing for his clubs, Suárez already had a place in the pantheon of World Cup villains.

In the 2010 quarterfinal against Ghana, he used his hands to deliberately deny the Black Stars a late goal, which almost certainly would have won the game. He was immediately sent off and Ghana was awarded a penalty kick. But Suárez's gamble paid off: Ghana missed and Uruguay went on to advance to the semifinals.

For that, he was compared with Diego Maradona of Argentina, another supremely gifted player with a dark side.

Maradona's World Cup infractions included the infamous Hand of God goal, when he got away with using his fist to punch in the ball against England, and being thrown out of the 1994 tournament for failing a drug test. His legacy, however, is undoubtedly that of an all-time great player.

Likewise, Zinedine Zidane is still worshiped as a World Cup hero in France for scoring twice in the 1998 final against Brazil. Less discussed is his straight red card earlier in that tournament for stomping on a Saudi Arabian player. There is also, of course, the moment of madness in the 2006 final when he was sent off for head-butting Marco Materazzi in a final that France lost to Italy.

But none of those crimes can compare with what is widely considered the most vicious assault in World Cup history. For that you have to look back to Toni Schumacher, the West German goalkeeper in 1982. During a semifinal against France, Schumacher charged off his line to intercept a ball while Patrick Battiston tried to chase it down. Battiston got there first and poked the ball away, while Schumacher leapt to clatter his head.

Battiston lay unconscious on the ground next to two of his teeth. The referee didn't even give a free kick. And FIFA, which wasn't equipped to issue retroactive punishment at the time, allowed Schumacher to start the final.

The noises coming from FIFA suggest that it won't be so lenient with Suárez. Uruguay has up to four games left at this World Cup, but may be without him for all of them.

And still, his teammates won't get why.

"What happened [Tuesday] was just contact, mutual provocation, of which there are a thousand in football," Lugano said. "Football without that wouldn't be football; it would be volleyball or a noncontact sport."

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# Colombia's Secret to Success: Pony Fútbol

#  Colombia's Secret to Success: Pony Futbol

_By Jonathan Clegg_

_July 3, 2014_

When soccer fans tune in to Brazil's 2014 World Cup quarterfinal matchup with Colombia on Friday, they will witness a team that lives up to the noblest traditions of _jogo bonito_.

We're talking about Colombia.

With a dazzling brand of attacking soccer, the Colombians have become the talk of the tournament. They've won all four of their games, scored 11 goals from five different players and have let up just two. They even have the best dance moves.

Colombia's exuberant style of play has highlighted the skill, athleticism and flair of a talented crop of young players. But if there's one attribute that stands out about the rising stars on this team, it's how freakishly composed they are.

Never mind that this is Colombia's first World Cup appearance in almost two decades. Led by James Rodriguez, a 22-year-old playmaker with a preternatural sense of self-assurance, an inexperienced squad with just a single outfield player over the age of 30 has treated the biggest tournament in international sports like a schoolyard kickaround.

"We knew that it was a strong team with many good footballers," said Jorge Bermudez, a former Colombia defender and now an ESPN analyst. "But what has surprised us is the mentality. They have shown no fear. No one expected it."

The remarkable poise shown by Rodriguez and the rest of Colombia's players is a credit to the work of Jose Pekerman, the team's seasoned head coach. It also helps that a raucous army of traveling fans has followed the team to Brazil.

But the secret to this team's otherworldly self-belief can be traced back over three decades to the creation of an annual junior soccer tournament that has since become South American soccer's answer to Friday-night football in Texas.

It is known as the Pony Futbol tournament and since it was launched in 1985, it has been contested every January by the best under-13 players in the country.

It has also played a key role in the development of many of Colombia's World Cup stars. In 2004, a 12-year-old Rodriguez was the player of the tournament after leading Academia Tolimense to the title and scoring with a corner kick in the final. The following year, midfielder Juan Quintero won the MVP at the age of 11.

In all, 11 of the 30 players in Colombia's original World Cup squad were graduates of Pony Futbol, including leading scorer Radamel Falcao, who was forced to miss the tournament with a knee injury.

"It is such an important tournament for these players," said Bermudez. "Playing in these games has helped them enormously."

How a junior soccer tournament has helped Colombia become a factory for world-class players is partly down to the country's soccer-mad fans.

From the outset, the Pony Futbol tournament proved such a hit that organizers were forced to move it from its original site at a track-and-field stadium in Medellin to the Estadio Atanasio Girardot, a 45,000 seat arena that is home to two of the city's professional clubs.

Games regularly draw more than 30,000 and the tournament is broadcast nationwide. Fredy Porras, who coached Quintero at the 2004 championship, says that the pressure of playing in front of sellout crowds and TV cameras aged 11 or 12 means that Colombians are unfazed when it comes to playing on the game's biggest stage.

While most countries try to shield young players from pressure to encourage creative play, Porras says that Pony Futbol teaches Colombian youngsters to stay cool when the stakes heat up. "It helps them bear the pressure because they are used in playing in stadiums full of fans," he said.

Coaches who have worked with Rodriguez say it's no surprise he has thrived under the bright lights at the World Cup. "He was never affected by pressure," said Ariel Holan, an assistant at Argentina's Club Atletico Banfield, which signed Rodriguez as a 17-year-old and made him the youngest foreign player ever to appear in Argentina's top division. "In important matches, he was always comfortable."

According to the broadcaster Telemedellin, which televises the tournament, 261 players have reached the professional ranks after playing in Pony Futbol.

Beyond the crowds and broadcast cameras, Pony Futbol also means that Colombia's young players receive early exposure to top-class coaching.

The tournament is so wildly popular and so fiercely competitive that it has become an important stepping stone for coaches looking to join the professional ranks. Indeed, the roll-call of head coaches who started out in Pony Futbol is almost as star-studded as its roster of players.

Luis Fernando Montoya, who won South America's most prestigious club tournament in 2004 by leading Once Caldas to the Copa Libertadores title, began his career in Pony Futbol. Francisco Maturana, the only other Colombian to lift the Libertadores trophy, also started coaching there. His team won the inaugural title in 1985. Within two years, he was coach of Colombia's national team.

But the biggest impact Pony Futbol has had on Colombian soccer may be the way it has imposed a coherent structure on the country's sprawling youth league system, which had made Colombia a perennial underachiever in world soccer despite its growing population, which now exceeds 47 million.

Prior to 1985, junior soccer in Colombia was a chaotic mess of regional leagues and local tournaments. The best players rarely got to compete against opponents from other provinces and even the top club teams struggled to track prospects.

By launching a championship to determine the best youth soccer team in the country, the organizers ensured that the top junior players would travel to Medellin each year. The result, according to Bermudez, is that Pony Futbol has become an unofficial scouting combine for Colombia's junior national teams.

Players who excel at Pony Futbol make up the bulk of the country's squad for the South American Under-15 championship, where Colombia has reached the final in three of the past six tournaments.

In many cases, those players continue to represent Colombia at Under-17 and Under-20 level. By the time they reach the senior national team, they have often been teammates for a decade.

"James and Quintero were playing together in Pony Futbol more than 10 years ago," said Bermudez. "These boys have been playing together with the junior national teams for a very long time and we are seeing that relationship on the field."

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# Why Isn't There Another Neymar?

#  Why Isn't There Another Neymar?

_By Jonathan Clegg_

_July 8, 2014_

Rio de Janeiro _—_ When Brazil forward Neymar was ruled out of the World Cup with a back injury on Friday, it was a seismic blow to the host team's hopes of hoisting the trophy and a major bummer for soccer fans across the globe. (Well, except in Germany.)

But as Brazil glumly came to terms with the loss of its talismanic playmaker ahead of Tuesday's semifinal against Germany, the depth of despair and anguish over Neymar's injury has also raised a puzzling question: How did international soccer's most successful nation, a _futebol_ -mad land of 200 million, come to be so reliant on a single attacking player?

"We have Neymar and after him, nothing," said Juninho Pernambucano, a member of Brazil's 2006 World Cup squad. "There is no one else capable of giving what he provides to the team."

Not long ago, the notion that the Brazil national team would be short of viable candidates to fill its famous _numero dez_ jersey would have been unthinkable.

Brazil's Marcelo after his teammate Neymar was felled in a clash with a Colombia player. (Getty)

For years, Brazil's problem wasn't finding world-class playmakers; it was fitting them all in the same lineup. Of the eight attacking players chosen for Brazil's 2002 World Cup-winning squad, four had won or would win the FIFA World Player of the Year award.

But in recent years, Brazil's production line of _fantasistas_ has dried up. These dazzling playmakers, whose elusive movement and breathtaking skills have embodied Brazilian soccer ever since Pelé first starred for the Seleção in the 1950s, are starting to look like an endangered species.

"They don't produce anything anymore," said Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger. "Even in midfield, they're good—but they're not the great Brazilians of the past."

Brazil's shortage of creative playmakers may have something to do with the lack of top-class training facilities in Brazilian soccer, which has finally started to hurt its youth development program.

Brazil's rise as an economic power may also be a factor. With higher salaries available, the country's brightest stars have remained in domestic soccer for longer than they used to, which—while a boon for Brazil's clubs—may have stunted the players' development, since their exposure to the top European leagues has been more limited.

But some say that the biggest reason for Brazil's lack of No. 10s is that a country once known for producing creative attackers has become a factory for a rather less glamorous position: fullback.

When a Brazil squad packed with sublime talents including Zico, Socrates, Eder and Falcão fell to a second-round defeat at the 1982 World Cup, it convinced those in charge of Brazilian soccer to move away from their traditional game of graceful dribbles and passing triangles toward a modern game built on counterattacks.

Ever since, Brazil has become renowned for explosive breaks down the wings led by its fullbacks. From Jorginho and Branco in the 1994 tournament (won by Brazil) to the 2002 World Cup tandem of Cafu and Roberto Carlos through to today's pairing of Marcelo and Dani Alves, Brazil's attacking game plan has focused on its marauding fullbacks. These defenders, who can snuff out attacks at one end and then sprint up the sideline to overwhelm opponents at the other, are the envy of world soccer.

But Brazil's dependence on attacking fullbacks has quietly slowed its development of midfield players. To cover for fullbacks bursting upfield, the team's central midfielders are obliged to drop back and cover on defense. The upshot, says Juninho, is that midfield creativity has become a forgotten art in Brazil.

"If you play with guard dogs in the midfield, the creativity suffers," he said. "It is why Brazil does not have passers like [Spain's] Xavi or [Andres] Iniesta."

It's a dynamic that has long been apparent in the professional game. Of the 22 Brazilians on the rosters of last season's UEFA Champions League quarterfinalists, nine were fullbacks. In contrast, just five occupied attacking positions.

To be sure, Brazil's production line of inventive attacking players hasn't completely run dry. But in recent years, some of the most ballyhooed Brazilian stars have failed to justify their outsize reputations after moving to Europe.

Highly touted talents including Alexandre Pato (AC Milan), Keirrison (Barcelona) and Robinho (Real Madrid) have variously flopped, flamed out or struggled to adapt to the greater tactical demands of European soccer. Philippe Coutinho of Liverpool and Lucas Moura of Paris Saint-Germain could both develop into top-class No. 10s, but neither has convinced in the yellow jersey of the Seleção.

Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari now faces a choice between two players to fill in for his injured superstar. Neither is an ideal candidate. Willian, a 25-year-old attacking midfielder for Chelsea, has made just 10 international appearances and was last seen flubbing a penalty in Brazil's round-of-16 shootout win over Chile.

The more likely option would see Oscar switch to the vacant central role and his right-sided position occupied by Willian or Bernard, a winger who plays his club soccer in the Ukrainian league.

But whatever he chooses, the Brazil coach acknowledged that in a squad short on playmakers, Neymar is all but irreplaceable.

"We have lost the one player we didn't want to lose," Scolari said. "Neymar is our benchmark; he is our reference because he always makes the difference."

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# Germany Forgoes Style for Silverware at the World Cup

#  Germany Forgoes Style for Silverware at the World Cup

_By Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson_

_July 8, 2014_

Belo Horizonte, Brazil _--_ Over the past eight years, the German national team has reached four straight major-tournament semifinals while playing some of the most entertaining soccer on the planet.

With a cast of speedy, technically skilled players and a touch-and-move attack that created goals in an instant, Die Nationalmannschaft dazzled fans and shook its reputation for playing a mechanical, disciplined and downright boring style.

There was just one problem: Germany stopped winning trophies.

Now, as it prepares to face Brazil here Tuesday in the 2014 World Cup semifinals, the team is attempting to end an 18-year wait for a major championship by reverting to what it knows best. Something more efficient, less freewheeling and--let's be honest--more German.

"What do you want?" defender Per Mertesacker asked after Germany ground out an uninspiring 2-1 extra-time win over Algeria in the round of 16. "Should we have a successful World Cup or should we play beautifully and be eliminated again?"

Germany opened its World Cup campaign with a 4-0 thrashing of Portugal. But since then, head coach Joachim Low has prioritized ruthless control over creativity. The Germans have won each of their past three matches by a single goal and shown a coldblooded knack for shutting down opponents and closing out games.

In its quarterfinal against France, Germany suffocated one of the tournament's most dangerous attacks so comprehensively that from the moment Mats Hummels scored 13 minutes in, the outcome seemed inevitable. "We didn't permit many goal-scoring opportunities," Low said. "That was the key."

All of this is a far cry from the 2010 World Cup, when Germany thrilled fans with a buccaneering style that saw players attacking seemingly from every direction.

The Germans scored 16 goals by eight different players in South Africa but came unstuck in the semifinals against a Spanish team whose controlled, short-passing game was accused of being boring. Euro 2012 saw history repeat itself as Germany top-scored with 10 goals in five games but lost out to Italy in the final four.

Determined not to let it happen again, Low realized his team's wide-open style had to change. Germany needed to remember how to win ugly.

The numbers show that Germany has abandoned its dynamic, fast-break offense at this tournament, reverting to a controlled, short-passing game that is expressly designed to hog possession and frustrate opponents.

In 2010, Germany's warp-speed attack scored six goals on fast breaks and peppered the opposing goal with shots, averaging just 54.1 passes for every one shot from inside the penalty area, according to Opta Sports.

Here in Brazil, they've put the handbrake on. Germany has scored just twice on fast breaks and now makes 72.6 passes before taking a shot inside the penalty area, or an increase of 34%.

In place of its lightning counterattacks, Germany has focused on a patient, possession-oriented approach to keep the ball away from opponents. The Germans held the ball for an average of 22.9 seconds per possession during the group stage, longer than any other team at the tournament.

And while the rest of the world came to Brazil with attacking lineups built for free-flowing, end-to-end soccer, Germany has been a blast of icy water. Despite a collection of world-class, offensive-minded fullbacks at home, Germany has often deployed a defensive line with four centerbacks to bully opposing forwards.

Going back to a more conservative style of play likely won't earn Germany many admirers. But the evidence suggests it has made them harder to beat.

Four years ago, Germany's wide-open attacking soccer allowed its opponents to take 108 shots, or 15.4 a game. In contrast, Germany has faced just 58 shots, or 11.6 a game, during this tournament. And even when teams have broken through, they've run into the most dynamic goalkeeper at the World Cup, Manuel Neuer.

Against a Brazil team missing its leading scorer, Germany's more pragmatic approach could be enough to spoil the home side's party and end its streak of semifinal heartbreak.

"Every team who comes up against us has to swallow hard," said striker Thomas Muller. "That is our aim--we want to be uncomfortable opponents."

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# INSIDE TEAM USA'S RUN

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# Soccer, Made in America

#  Soccer, Made in America

_By Matthew Futterman_

_June 5, 2014_

Jamaica's National Stadium in Kingston is one of the strangest places to play in international soccer. The track that surrounds the field is pristine, but the pitch is marked with patches of bare dirt. There is a scoreboard, but it has no clock.

The U.S. national team came here to face Jamaica last June in a crucial World Cup qualifier they were widely expected to win. But after the U.S. took a 1-0 lead deep into the second half, Jamaica took advantage of a free kick and a sleeping U.S. defense to sneak a header past the U.S. goalkeeper and equalize the score.

In the convoluted math of World Cup qualifying, a tie against Jamaica was as good as a loss for the U.S.—one that could seriously damage its chances of even making it to Brazil for the World Cup. The Americans desperately needed a quick score.

But without a scoreboard clock, none of the players knew how much time was left. U.S. defender Brad Evans asked the referee, but he just ran on by. Finally, an official on the sidelines held up a card. Four minutes to go.

A crisis was looming at a pivotal moment in this World Cup campaign—and to some extent for soccer in America. Team USA needed to strike fast. It was time do what their German-born coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, had been exhorting them to do for months: It was time to play soccer like _Americans_.

Klinsmann. (Getty)

For nearly a century, the world's soccer-playing nations have tried to forge connections between the way they see themselves and what they do on the field. Italy has its _catenaccio_ —literally "doorbolt"—a technical, defensive approach that relies on stifling the opponent's attack and executing quick counterstrikes. Brazil's dance-like samba soccer, with its heel passes and creative wizardry, is the epitome of spontaneity. The English play quickly and directly, attacking with long balls and threatening passes from the flanks toward the goal. And Spain became world champions in 2010 with a style known as _tiki-taka_ , or touch-touch, a possession-obsessed style that relies on short, triangular-patterned passing and freakish endurance.

Before Mr. Klinsmann took the reins of the American team three years ago, playing like an American meant, for the most part, sticking to an assigned position and reacting to the other team's attack. To Mr. Klinsmann, a former German star and national-team coach who moved to the U.S. in 1998, the strategy struck him as wholly un-American.

Mr. Klinsmann, soccer's Alexis de Tocqueville, wanted to build a winner, but he wasn't interested in teaching Americans how to play like anyone else. He wanted to create a squad that represented what he sees as the defining American characteristic—a visceral hatred of being dictated to.

"American nature is to take the game to our opponents. We don't want to just react to them," he explained in an interview last month near his home in Southern California.

Mr. Klinsmann had been hired in the hope of ushering in a new era for American soccer. A year after the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where the national team got bounced by Ghana one game before the quarterfinals, the U.S. Soccer Federation, the sport's overseer, booted Bob Bradley, the U.S.-born coach. To snag Mr. Klinsmann, the federation dangled roughly $2.5 million a year, about three times what Mr. Bradley had earned.

The decision struck U.S. soccer-watchers as a final acknowledgment of what they all secretly suspected: that U.S. Soccer's attempts to build its program with American coaches and homegrown tactics had stalled. No American has ever been a star on one of the world's top club soccer teams—and there was no chance of the talent improving overnight. It was time to hire a European coach, who presumably would copy the methods of the world's best teams.

In the U.S., where children have been playing soccer in large numbers only since the 1970s, there has never been a coherent style of play. U.S. teams, in general, run fast and play hard enough to make the game physically uncomfortable for opponents. Since qualifying for the World Cup in 1990 for the first time in 40 years, the U.S. had played conservatively and defensively. It was good enough for a quarterfinal berth in 2002 and losses in the round of 16 in both 1994 and 2010. "You play to win," says Bruce Arena, who coached the U.S. team in 2002. The strength of American players, he says, "is that they are hardworking and can adapt to different game plans."

Mr. Klinsmann brought his own ideas. In January 2012, six months after taking the job, he gathered 20 U.S. hopefuls for his first winter training camp in Phoenix. Beneath the desert sun, he introduced a punishing style of training. Midfielder Graham Zusi recalls a blur of fitness tests, weightlifting sessions, shuttle runs and agility and quickness drills. "It felt like we barely touched the ball for the first week and a half," he says.

The new coach also has brought in a group of players who grew up in Germany but have at least one American parent, which made them eligible for the U.S. team. They had skills and confidence gained playing the fast, aggressive German style. Five are headed to the World Cup: defenders John Brooks, Fabian Johnson and Tim Chandler, and midfielders Julian Green and Jermaine Jones.

Mr. Klinsmann, a veteran of Germany's 1990 World Cup-winning team, revealed himself to his players as the father who can occasionally be pleased but is never truly satisfied. Execute a perfect pass, or play a perfect game with speed and aggression, and his reaction is: Do it again, and do it even better and faster the next time, every game, season after season.

As coach of Germany's national team, he took a youthful group to the 2006 semifinal by transforming it from a defensive-minded squad to a free-flowing attacking one. He believed the modern game had no place for teams that hang back and try merely to survive—"parking the bus in front of the goal" in soccer-speak. For the U.S. team, he felt this strategy was wrong on another level: it was un-American. "You want to take things in your own hands," he says of American behavior on and off the field.

Mr. Klinsmann taught the U.S. players to see the field differently—to impose themselves on opposing defenses, and for defenders to push high into the middle of the field and even to join the attack. Midfielders, who have to both attack and defend, were sent down the sides of the field where they could send crossing passes in front of their opponent's goal.

Most important, he implored them to keep the ball moving around the field, and the only way to do that, he explained, was to stay in near perpetual motion, to search constantly for the open space where they can receive a pass.

Kyle Beckerman, the U.S. midfielder, says that differed from former coach Bob Bradley's philosophy, which stressed every player staying in an organized block of space.

"You want to play an open game," Mr. Klinsmann says. "You want to put your stamp on that game."

In January 2013, during a second winter camp for U.S.-based players, Mr. Klinsmann still wasn't happy. He sensed a bit of self-satisfaction among his veterans. Landon Donovan, the team's veteran midfielder, had declared he was taking an indefinite sabbatical from the game, even though the final World Cup qualifying tournament loomed.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal at that time, Mr. Klinsmann made it clear he thought the players were too proud of themselves for making it out of the group stage of the 2010 World Cup before getting ousted by Ghana, a poor nation less than one-tenth the size of the U.S. Such a result, he noted, would cause a national crisis in Germany.

He said Clint Dempsey, who set an American record with 23 goals in 2012 for the English Premier League club Fulham, hadn't "made s—" in his career. The longtime U.S. captain, Carlos Bocanegra, was benched.

He expressed doubt that Mr. Donovan, an American stalwart for more than a decade, would earn back a place on the national team. Last month, Mr. Klinsmann announced Mr. Donovan failed to make the World Cup squad. That move came two weeks after Mr. Klinsmann said the American star no longer had the physical ability to play the midfield—a contention Mr. Donovan disputes.

On Feb. 4 of last year, the team flew to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for the opener of the final, 10-game, six-team qualifying tournament for Concacaf, the regional confederation that includes North America, Central America and the Caribbean. The top three teams would automatically qualify for the World Cup, with the fourth facing a scary playoff match against New Zealand.

With the midafternoon temperature near 90 and the humidity near 100%, hope disappeared for playing the fast-paced, quick-passing style Mr. Klinsmann favored. The Hondurans had grown the grass extra-long to slow the faster U.S. players. To make matters worse, Mr. Bocanegra's inexperienced replacement, Omar Gonzalez, flubbed a defensive assignment that allowed Honduras to tap in the winning score.

On the journey home, Mr. Klinsmann barely talked to his team. Even accounting for searing heat, they hadn't played the way he wanted them to, controlling the ball just 43% of the time and letting the Hondurans dictate play.

He knew he had made a serious miscalculation: Rather than taking a team of U.S.-based players down early to let them adjust to the climate, he had selected several based in Europe, including Mr. Dempsey. They played for club teams in chilly Europe and had just two days to prepare.

Six weeks later, the team played Costa Rica in Colorado, where they were bogged down again—this time by a blizzard. After Mr. Dempsey scored in the 16th minute, the defense, with a major assist from Mother Nature, held on for a sloppy 1-0 win. In the next game, against Mexico at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, the U.S. escaped with a 0-0 draw—even though they were outshot 19-1 and only held the ball 42% of the time, worse, even, than in Honduras.

With the team facing three games in 11 days against Jamaica, Panama and Honduras, the Americans' ticket to Brazil was anything but certain. Worse, they were doing about half of what Mr. Klinsmann wanted them to do. They could battle like dogs, but the stylistic renaissance appeared on hold.

With time growing short in the Jamaica game and the score knotted 1-1, the U.S. team knew it had reached a defining moment. The usual reaction of a road team that concedes a late goal is to tighten up and play defensively to ensure another goal doesn't slip by. But the Americans weren't having it. They pushed the ball forward, forcing the Reggae Boyz into survival mode.

With three minutes to go, Mr. Zusi sent a cross into the vicinity of Jamaica's goal, kicking off a dangerous sequence that gave the U.S. a corner kick, a chance to restart play with nearly all its players in scoring position. Sensing the precious seconds ticking by, midfielder Michael Bradley, the son of former coach Bob Bradley, sprinted for the corner. "We felt like if we could get the ball back and play quickly, we were going to get another chance," he recalls.

With a little more than two minutes left, Mr. Bradley sent a short corner kick to Mr. Zusi near the left edge of the penalty area, an 18-yard box in front of the goal. He played it back to Mr. Bradley, who beat the Jamaican defender Alvas Powell with a quick pass to Mr. Evans, 8 yards in front of Jamaica's left goal post. "I took a little half turn and my first thought was, shoot!" Mr. Evans recalls.

With three defenders clustered around him, he rocketed a blind shot into the back of the Jamaican net. Twenty-three players joined in the celebratory pile in the corner of the field. About 100 seconds later, the final whistle sounded.

The U.S. team had done something exceedingly rare in soccer, winning a match in "stoppage-time"—the few minutes tacked on to the end of a game to compensate for prior halts in play. They also had given their coach his first glimpse of the kind of soccer he had been exhorting them to play.

Minutes later in the locker room, Mr. Klinsmann, who had been a part of many last-minute wins with Germany, told the players this was the kind of effort required to compete at the highest level. The U.S. didn't just hold the ball for nearly 60% of the game, it repeatedly had moved it deep into Jamaican territory and pressed until the end.

The wins against Jamaica and Costa Rica and the draw with Mexico had left the U.S. with seven points. With six games remaining, three of them on home soil, the 15 points usually required to punch a ticket to Brazil looked easily within reach.

As the team prepared for its home game in Seattle against Panama, Mr. Evans recalls, the whole tone had changed. A collective light bulb seemed to go off when the team watched videos of recent games. "It was all about how we want to impose ourselves," says Mr. Evans.

A day later, in front of 40,000 friendly fans, they showed that Mr. Klinsmann's lessons were sinking in. In the 36th minute, midfielder Geoff Cameron corralled a loose ball 30 yards in front of the U.S. goal. Instantly, he pushed it ahead to Mr. Bradley, who carried it up the middle into the gut of Panama's defense. Fabian Johnson, one of Mr. Klinsmann's German-American imports, sprinting up the left side, took a pass from Mr. Bradley and fired the ball toward the far goal post. Jozy Altidore volleyed it into the net. All told, six U.S. players were either in, or about to enter, the penalty area in front of the goal when Mr. Altidore scored.

To Mr. Evans, the goal looked like one of a half-dozen pattern plays Mr. Klinsmann had been running in practice for a year and a half. "It was almost like there were cones on the field," he says.

"Soccer is so free flowing," notes Mr. Bradley. "We have ideas about what we want to do and ways to be dangerous, but rarely does it come off exactly as you talk about it."

Mr. Klinsmann says of that goal: "This is what the best teams in the world do...Now we need to prove it again. Next game comes, we want to see those sequences three, four, five times. It doesn't have to be a goal every time, but you want to see that change of pace, that execution speed."

A week after beating Panama 2-0, the U.S. smothered Honduras 1-0 on a 90-degree night in Sandy, Utah. The win all but clinched World Cup qualification and avenged the February debacle in San Pedro Sula. Honduras possessed the ball for just 38% of the match and managed just five shots, one on the goal, compared with 13 and five for the U.S. In a tunnel beneath Rio Tinto Stadium after the game, a dazed and exhausted Roger Espinoza, the Honduran midfielder said, "That's a different team than the one we faced in February."

The team's performance in the 2013 Gold Cup last July highlighted the change. The U.S. won all six tournament games, scoring 18 goals on 98 shots, 48 of them on goal. In the 2011 Gold Cup, when the team's lackluster play cost former coach Bob Bradley his job, the U.S. scored just nine goals on 90 shots, only 27 of them on goal. It lost two of its six games, including the final.

As the U.S. team prepares for Brazil, conventional wisdom says it will have its work cut out to be one of the two teams to emerge from its opening-round "group of death," which includes Ghana, Germany and Portugal.

Mr. Klinsmann, whose contract runs through the next World Cup in 2018, insists he cannot turn the U.S. men into a soccer superpower single-handedly or quickly. But he isn't letting up. In February, he ran a full-length, intrasquad scrimmage in high heat and humidity of Brazil. "They have to sacrifice themselves," he says of his players.

Whatever the team does going forward, Mr. Klinsmann has given U.S. soccer an American way to play. Joachim Löw, Germany's head coach and Mr. Klinsmann's former assistant, said the U.S. is a far different and more challenging team than the one teams prepared for in South Africa. "Under Jurgen," he said, "they have another mentality."

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# Why I Hate American Soccer Fans

#  Why I Hate American Soccer Fans

_By Jonathan Clegg_

_June 6, 2014_

Over the years, I've been angered, saddened and ashamed by these things. But through it all, my love for soccer remained undimmed.

But lately, I've discovered there's a new scourge on my beloved game that I simply cannot tolerate: Americans.

Understand that I'm not talking about the vast majority of you, who still regard soccer as a distinctly European product of dubious worth, like espadrilles or universal health care.

I don't begrudge fans here who have only recently awakened to the charms of what the rest of the world has long known as the beautiful game. Welcome to the party!

The problem is your soccer obsessives. By my reckoning, they may be the most derivative, excessive and utterly ridiculous collection of sports fans on the planet.

If you've ever stumbled across this tribe as they spill out of a bar on Saturday mornings after 90 minutes spent watching a game contested by two teams based thousands of miles away, you'll know the sort of fans I'm talking about.

A U.S. fan at a World Cup qualifying match in September. (Getty)

They refer to the sport as " _fútbol_ ," hold long conversations about the finer points of the 4-4-2 formation and proudly drape team scarves around their necks even when the temperature outside is touching 90 degrees.

It is this band of soccer junkies who have turned the simple pleasure I used to derive from heading to a bar to watch a game into something more akin to undergoing root canal surgery.

It's not that they all have the same stories about study-abroad trips to Europe, or that they get wildly excited about the simplest saves, or even, for inexplicable reasons, that 90% of soccer fans in the U.S. seem to root for Arsenal.

My biggest gripe is that all of this feels like an elaborate affectation.

Instead of watching the game in the time-honored way of American sports fans—by thrusting a giant foam finger in the air, say, or devouring a large plate of Buffalo wings—your soccer fanatics have taken to aping the behavior of our fans from across the pond.

The scarves thing is an obvious example, but it's far from the only one. There's the self-conscious use of terms like "pitch," "match" and "kit," the songs lifted directly from English soccer stadiums, and even the appropriation of terrace couture.

On a recent weekend, I went to a bar to watch the UEFA Champions League final and found myself stationed next to a soccer fan wearing a replica Arsenal jersey, a team scarf around his neck and a pair of Dr. Martens lace-ups. He looked like he he'd been born and raised along the Holloway Road. In fact, he was from Virginia.

The whole thing seemed to be less an expression of genuine fandom and more like an elaborate piece of performance art. Didn't we fight a war so you guys wouldn't have to take cues on how to behave from London?

It should come as no surprise that the situation is particularly heinous in New York City. This is a town where artisanal toast is now a thing. So of course there's a peculiar species of fan here whose passion for soccer seems to be less about 22 men chasing a ball up and down a field and more about its intellectual and cosmopolitan qualities.

Never mind that no other sport is so linked to the working class. For these fans, rooting for an English soccer team is a highbrow pursuit and a mark of sophistication, like going to a Wes Anderson movie or owning a New Yorker subscription.

It's not just English soccer that's been fetishized in this way, of course. Your soccer snobs have pilfered elements of fan culture from Spain, Italy and Latin America. These days, half of your national team has been imported from Germany.

There's the curious obsession with 'tifo'—those enormous banners that are unfurled in stadiums before kickoff. They work at Lazio, Bayern Munich or Boca Juniors. At Real Salt Lake, not so much.

These soccer snobs are so intent on maintaining an aura of authenticity that when they make a slip-up or use an incorrect or ill-advised term, I feel compelled to pounce on them with all the force of a Roy Keane challenge.

There's no such position as outside back! (It is fullback.) The rest of the world doesn't call them PKs! (It is penalties. Just penalties.)

Not to mention the fact that your fans happily refer to Team USA captain Clint Dempsey by the nickname "Deuce." Deuce?! This is international soccer, not "Top Gun."

Ever since a ball was first kicked into a net, it has been an inviolable law of the game that Dempsey should be shortened to Demps. Just like Michael Bradley gets cut to Bradders, John Brooks to Brooksy and Jermaine Jones to Jonesy, or perhaps JJ, at a push. (For the record, Mix Diskerud can still be known as Mix Diskerud.)

The great regret about all this is that mimicking the customs of fans from everywhere else could hinder the development of your own American soccer identity.

One of the joys of soccer is seeing how different cultures view, interpret and celebrate the game in their own distinct ways.

I find it fascinating, for example, that while we see soccer as a broad narrative that unfolds over 90 minutes, your fans tend to think about the sport as a series of discrete events.

Or that I view the coming World Cup and England's inevitable failure with a mixture of trepidation and dread, while your fans seem positively excited about the tournament.

Mind you, with Team USA facing a potentially decisive matchup with Germany, there's a strong chance that your upbeat disposition won't last long. That is one lesson you can take from an Englishman.

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# The Team With Four Captains

#  The Team With Four Captains

_By Matthew Futterman_

_June 16, 2014_

Natal, Brazil _—_ As it opens its 2014 World Cup campaign against Ghana on Monday, the U.S. men's national soccer team will take the field with a highly unusual command structure: At any moment, any one of four or five different players might be barking out orders.

First there is the team's actual captain, Clint Dempsey, who is roughly equal in stature to the tireless midfielder Michael Bradley. Next we have star goalkeeper Tim Howard, a veteran of England's Premier League, and defender DaMarcus Beasley, a four-time World Cup participant who has played nearly every position on the team. At other times, the players take their cues from the aggressive German-born midfielder Jermaine Jones or striker Jozy Altidore.

"In a way everyone is a leader out there," Beasley said.

Clint Dempsey, right, and Michael Bradley are among the many leaders of the U.S. team. (Getty)

When it comes to the science of team leadership, the only thing most athletes agree upon is that team leadership is important. What it should look like, and how it ought to function, are basically anyone's guess.

When asked, the U.S. team seems to view its many-headed approach as an embarrassment of riches. "It's important on the field that there isn't only one guy, that we have a whole team," Jones said.

But if the U.S. fails to emerge from its Group of Death with Germany, Portugal and Ghana to play in the tournament's knockout phase, everything about its structure will be dissected. Surely one of the first items to be plopped onto the examination table will be the diffuse nature of its leadership.

In March 2013, after head coach Jurgen Klinsmann dropped former longtime captain Carlos Bocanegra from the team, he called Dempsey, an attacking midfielder, on his cellphone to tell him he was the team's new leader. When the U.S. kicks off against Ghana here in Natal, Dempsey will be wearing the traditional captain's armband.

But when Dempsey skipped last summer's Gold Cup tournament, it was Beasley who took on the captain's role. And last March, when anonymous quotes questioning the team's direction began to appear in news reports, it was Bradley who stood up in the locker room to talk about the importance of keeping any complaints inside the team.

On Sunday in Natal, Bradley joined Dempsey and Klinsmann in a pre-match news conference that traditionally only involves the head coach and captain. A U.S. Soccer spokesman said the team has the option to add another player to the podium if it chooses to.

In international soccer, the captain is usually the undisputed on-field commander. He has unwritten special privileges to push and prod his teammates and to challenge the referee's decisions the most stridently. The German powerhouse teams of the 1970s were indisputably run by Franz Beckenbauer, just as the French from 1998-2006 could easily have been called "Les (Zinedine) Zidanes" instead of Les Bleus. Spain in 2010 was the domain of Iker Casillas; Steven Gerrard is the picture of authority and fiery leadership for England.

Dempsey doesn't subscribe to the idea that a captain has to be a human bull horn. He has never embraced the captain's role in a rah-rah way and has been known to disappear in despair for long stretches when things don't go well. He says he prefers to lead by example.

Before the World Cup, Dempsey said the U.S. was "lucky" to have veterans like Howard and Bradley "who have leadership qualities that the players can feed off."

On the field, it is Bradley who often quarterbacks the squad, yelling at teammates to attack, to feed him the ball or chase back on defense. Part of this is a function of his central position on the field—Dempsey is usually off to the side focusing on making deep runs into opposing territory. But the other U.S. players make it clear that after Bradley, there are many others whose voices set the tone.

Jones is another "leadership type" on the field, said defender Fabian Johnson, "or even from the back Tim Howard. The center players are always trying to communicate," he said.

Brad Guzan, the backup goalkeeper said the on-field leadership "all begins with the goalkeeper and the center backs." One of those center backs, Omar Gonzalez, said: "Clint is the captain, but we have good speakers, starting with Tim, Michael Bradley in the middle and Clint up front."

Jones said it's good to have different leadership styles to help in different situations: "I can push the guys and then someone a little quieter can relax the guys," he explained.

Asked to describe the team's leadership model, Howard, the goalkeeper, said "Clint Dempsey is the captain of the ship and we go where he takes it."

But he also said that once the game starts, he commands the back of the field, orchestrating the defense—something that makes sense because he has the best view of oncoming attack. "When I do it, it's usually with some urgency," he said. "Every goalkeeper has to have leadership qualities. That is the requisite of the position."

Tim Chandler, a German-American defender, made one thing clear about the team's leadership. When it comes to controlling the locker-room sound system, there is only one captain: Tim Howard.

###

# Is This Soccer's Moment in America?

#  Is This Soccer's Moment in America?

_By Amol Sharma, Keach Hagey and Laura Stevens_

_June 27, 2014_

The World Cup is enjoying a surge in TV ratings thanks to excitement surrounding the U.S. team's strong performance, putting the tournament among the elite telecasts in all of sports. But can soccer sustain its burst in popularity in the U.S.?

The evidence suggests that some skepticism is in order.

The U.S. lost 1-0 on Thursday to Germany, but still advanced to the knockout stage of the tournament, having survived this year's Group of Death.

The surprising run has made for captivating television. Ratings for the Germany match weren't available on Thursday, but it is clear already that this year's telecasts are setting records. The U.S. match versus Portugal on Sunday wasn't just the highest-rated soccer game ever in the U.S. The combined viewership of the game was 24.7 million between ESPN and Univision, making it the most-viewed sporting event of the year so far, excluding American football, a perennial ratings juggernaut.

"International World Cup soccer has definitely arrived in the U.S.," said Lee Berke, a sports-media consultant. "This definitely signals the arrival of World Cup soccer as a major television property."

The online activity has been just as intense. ESPN says online viewing of matches totals 20.5 million hours, among the most ever for any sporting event. Over 11 million people viewed tweets about the U.S. match against Ghana and a similar number saw tweets about the Portugal match, Nielsen says. That is higher than the 9.1 million people who saw tweets about the finale of "Breaking Bad" last fall.

The excitement was palpable Thursday at Ri Ra, an Irish pub in midtown Atlanta where U.S. supporters packed the house on their lunch breaks to see the Germany match. Many of them were skipping out on work. "It's been insane compared with four years ago," said Peter Constant, the pub's manager. "The fact that the Americans are doing well obviously helps a whole lot."

But does the enthusiasm for the World Cup signal a lasting shift in Americans' interest in soccer? The tournament happens only once every four years--and the U.S. only plays a handful of matches.

Andrea Bess, a 29-year-old who was at the Atlanta pub, said she has become a huge World Cup fan, but doesn't follow the sport otherwise. "I'm the perfect kind of American. I only watch during the World Cup," she said.

That helps explain why ratings of soccer telecasts outside of the World Cup are relatively muted. Major League Soccer matches averaged 174,000 viewers last season, according to Nielsen, up 6% from the previous year. The finals on ESPN, known as the MLS Cup, pulled in 505,000 viewers in December. The English Premier League averaged 395,000 viewers this season on NBC Sports Network. Fox's Champions League title game got 3.1 million viewers.

In contrast, the big U.S. sports leagues keep up interest year-round. The NBA on Time Warner Inc.'s TNT network averaged about 2 million viewers a game this regular season and 6.8 million viewers during the Western Conference Finals. Football towered over it all: NFL games averaged 17.6 million viewers during the 2013 season.

Berke said MLS games might see a lift in ratings if the U.S. team continues to advance and the excitement over its success keeps building.

There have been bigger international sporting events for the U.S., historically: Some 34 million people tuned in to watch the U.S. defeat the Soviet Union in men's hockey's "Miracle on Ice" at the 1980 Winter Olympics, for example. And at the 2010 Olympics, Canada's victory over the U.S. in hockey was watched by 27.6 million people.

In addition to the huge viewership for matches involving the U.S., general interest in the World Cup has been building in recent years. This year's tournament is averaging four million U.S. viewers, twice the viewership in 2002, according to Nielsen.

Several thousand fans huddled at Grant Park in Chicago for the Germany match, most draped in red, white and blue with their necks craned up to the big screen. Dr. Justin Hourmozdi of Detroit drove into Chicago to meet his brother Johnny, a medical student, for the game. They each had matching USA banners wrapped around their heads and American flag glasses. "There's a real feeling now that, 'Oh, it's cool to watch soccer,'" Justin said. "Our generation was the kids who played little-league soccer. That helps."

In Raleigh, N.C., more than 500 people crowded into Tyler's Restaurant and Taproom for Thursday's game. Ten-year-old Gabriel Edmonston was sporting a Team USA jersey alongside his father, a local pastor. "At recess, no one is playing football or baseball," he said. "They're playing soccer. It's the most played sport in the world."

Nearby, North Carolina State University faculty member Russell Gorga, said he happily watches soccer every four years, for as long as the U.S. wins. "Look, our kids play it, it's popular until after high school and it goes away," Gorga said.

There are some die-hard, year-round soccer fans out there, too. At the Atlanta pub, college student Kevin Davis said he watches the English Premiere League every weekend and follows Germany's Bundesliga league. "Our generation is way more into it. That's a fact," said Davis. He and other young viewers credited some FIFA's soccer videogame with boosting interest in the sport.

During the years when the World Cup's popularity has grown, the Hispanic population of the U.S. has grown. There were 37.4 million Hispanics in the U.S. in 2002, representing 13.3% of the total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2012, the Hispanic population was 53 million, making up 17% of the U.S. population.

"I think Hispanics are clearly fueling the growth," said Keith Turner, president of sales and marketing for Univision Communications Inc. "They are soccer fanatics." More people tuned in to watch the Spanish-language broadcast of the MLS Cup Final on Univision Communications' UniMas network than the English-language broadcast of the match on ESPN.

Berke noted that the biggest beneficiary of soccer's growing popularity in the U.S. won't be ESPN, but Fox--which has sealed up the rights to the next two World Cups. (Fox-parent 21st Century Fox Inc. and Wall Street Journal-owner News Corp. were part of the same company until 2013.)

Fox will pay an estimated $203 million for the 2018 World Cup, according to David Bank, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, a huge jump from the $55 million ESPN is paying for this tournament. While that is a pittance compared with the $1.8 billion a year that ESPN is currently paying for the NFL or $485 million it is paying for the NBA, according to Bank's estimates, it shows how fast the value of the World Cup is growing in the U.S.

Berke said all signs are "pointing in the right direction for the growth of soccer as a television property."

--Valerie Bauerlein, Jack Nicas, Karishma Mehrotra and Shalini Ramachandran contributed to this article.

###

# Jurgen Klinsmann's Yoda

#  Jurgen Klinsmann's Yoda

_By Jonathan Clegg_

_June 30, 2014_

The U.S. national soccer team's dramatic run to the 2014 World Cup knockout round has thrilled and captivated Americans across the length and breadth of the country.

But some 5,000 miles away, in a quiet corner of Buenos Aires, it has also brought a glimmer of satisfaction to an elderly Argentine with wild gray hair, thick sideburns and a profound craving for cigarettes.

His name is César Luis Menotti, and to soccer fans world-wide, he is known as the charismatic, chain-smoking coach who led Argentina to its first World Cup triumph in 1978. Less known is the role he has played nearly four decades later as tactical guru, inspirational mentor and coaching swami to U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann.

As the Americans face Belgium on Tuesday for a spot in the quarterfinals, their progress in Brazil owes an outsize debt to a 75-year-old coach known as El Flaco (the thin one).

For more than 40 years, Menotti has been the standard-bearer for a wide-open brand of attacking soccer. His central belief is that the key to victory isn't defensive organization or keeping hold of the ball, but trying to score as many goals inside 90 minutes as humanly possible.

Former Argentina coach César Luis Menotti. (Getty)

His ideas have influenced the likes of Jorge Valdano, Marcelo Bielsa and Pep Guardiola, who made a pilgrimage to Argentina to visit Menotti before becoming head coach at FC Barcelona.

But Klinsmann may be his most devoted disciple. Ever since he played under Menotti during a brief spell at the Italian club Sampdoria in 1997, Klinsmann has been a champion of his attack-attack-attack vision of the game.

During his coaching career, he has sought out Menotti's advice. In separate stints with Bayern Munich and the U.S. team, Klinsmann hired Martín Vásquez, one of Menotti's former players, to be his assistant coach.

"Every coach I worked with had an influence on what I am doing today," Klinsmann said, "and I had some phenomenal coaches."

It is no exaggeration, though, to say that nearly every aspect of Klinsmann's coaching philosophy bears the imprint of Menotti.

"There was this chemistry between the two of them," said Danny Dichio, a teammate of Klinsmann on Menotti's Sampdoria squad. "With Menotti, it was a whole new approach, not just tactically, but even down to the training. Jurgen was like a sponge."

As Germany's coach in the mid-2000s, Klinsmann transformed a squad long known for its defensive style of play into a fast, freewheeling side that racked up 14 goals in seven games and reached the semifinals of the 2006 World Cup.

Granted, no one is going to confuse Klinsmann's U.S. team with the Argentina squad that Menotti guided to World Cup glory. But there are signs that the same positive style of play is taking hold.

In its opening two games here against Ghana and Portugal, the U.S. had 23 shots and scored four times. "He has the wish to create an offensive team," said Mario Kempes, a member of Argentina's 1978 team, of Klinsmann. "It's difficult because he can only use the players that he has at his disposal, but you can see the idea is there."

Even Klinsmann's commitment to developing a distinctly American style of play evokes Menotti, whose success in the 1970s came from blending modern concepts and techniques with a traditional Argentine brand of soccer known as La Nuestra.

"This is the key for Menotti," says Kempes, now an analyst for ESPN. "You can only succeed by playing in the way which comes naturally to you. For Argentina, this means quick passes, running with the ball and scoring goals."

The shared belief in the benefits of attacking soccer is far from the only link to Menotti. His influence also extends to Klinsmann's work on the training field.

In a sport usually seen as free-flowing and spontaneous, Menotti introduced the idea of pre-rehearsed moves to the training field. His drills involved endlessly repeating specific patterns of play, which were invariably designed to spread the ball out wide and get as many players as possible charging into the penalty box.

Brad Evans, a U.S. midfielder, said Klinsmann has brought those same sequences to Team USA training sessions. "There's six or seven [patterns] that we work on in any given day," he said. "And the big thing with those pattern plays is getting a late runner in the top of the box and making sure we've got numbers in the box."

On some occasions, Klinsmann has even turned to Menotti for tactical pointers ahead of a key game.

On the eve of Germany's round-of-16 showdown with Sweden at the 2006 World Cup, Menotti met with Klinsmann and advised him to instruct midfielder Torsten Frings to fall back into the defensive line to combat Sweden's dangerous counterattack. Germany dominated the game and won 2-0 as Sweden managed just two shots.

The success of the U.S. team under Klinsmann is in some ways a vindication for Menotti, whose attacking philosophy fell out of favor as defensive soccer took hold of the game more than two decades ago. Despite leading Argentina to its first World Cup and the under-20 championship 12 months later, Menotti was fired after failing to advance beyond the second round at the 1982 tournament in Spain.

He returned to club soccer and had brief stints at FC Barcelona, Atlético Madrid and Boca Juniors, but encountered little success. Menotti had surgery to remove a tumor on his lung in 2011 and he hasn't coached again—or smoked again—since.

It isn't known whether Klinsmann dialed up Menotti to exchange ideas ahead of this World Cup, but the Argentina coach surely would have had some useful advice.

Klinsmann kicked up a storm when he omitted Landon Donovan from his squad for the tournament, but it is unlikely that Menotti would have been impressed. In 1978, he was vilified in Argentina for his decision to leave out a 17-year-old named Diego Maradona. He was only forgiven when he lifted the trophy.

"This is one thing every coach can take from Menotti," Kempes said. "If you win the World Cup, no one can criticize you."

###

# What Now for America and Soccer?

#  What Now for America and Soccer?

_By Matthew Futterman_

_July 3, 2014_

There's a moment in every romantic relationship when one person says to the other, "What are we doing here? Is this serious?"

That's about where the American sports public finds itself after its 20-day fling with a U.S. World Cup team that, while not particularly skilled, managed to represent a lot of traits Americans love. They were fearless. They were willing to suffer and fight to the end. They embraced anyone, no matter where they were from, as long as they held those athletic truths to be self-evident.

Now this relationship has reached the moment when we need to talk.

America, are you all in?

If you are, the timing couldn't be better. Usually when the U.S. gets knocked out of the World Cup, as it did in Tuesday's 2-1 round-of-16 loss to Belgium, it's staring at a long four years for another set of truly meaningful games. Not this time. The next three summers will undoubtedly be the best World Cup interregnum ever.

Next summer brings the Gold Cup, the confederation championship for North and Central America and the Caribbean that carries the chance to solidify a spot in the 2017 Confederations Cup in Russia, the dress rehearsal for the 2018 World Cup. There's also the 2015 Women's World Cup in Canada, a tournament the U.S. should win.

In 2016, the Copa America, South America's continental championship, comes to the U.S., giving the national team a chance to take on the likes of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay in meaningful games on home soil. That summer should also bring an under-23 team (plus three designated older players) back to Brazil for the Rio Olympics. Then 2017 should bring the Confederations Cup, and 2018 the World Cup. There's a lot of fun to be had here.

Like all relationships, though, it's going to take serious commitment and a leap of faith to build a foundation for long-term success--and a lot of that won't feel anything like the thrilling past three weeks.

The U.S. needs to find or create more players who have both the skills to hold the ball and the athletic talent to blow by opponents with speed and strength.

Take a close look at the Ghana's Asamoah Gyan and Belgium's Romelu Lukaku, the two players who scored the deciding goals that sent the U.S. home the past two World Cups. They did it by overwhelming American defenders. It's a safe bet that with their speed and brute strength, Gyan and Lukaku would have ended up as NFL wide receivers had they grown up in the States. Does anyone doubt that some great wide-receiver prospect out there could have been a wondrous soccer player?

A nation that aspires to be at the pinnacle of the world's most popular sport has to commit its best athletes to the cause. Julian Green, the 19-year-old German-American who scored moments after stepping on the field Tuesday night, and DeAndre Yedlin, the 20-year Seattle Sounder, look skilled, talented and hungry.

Both need to get stronger. They need company, too, no matter where it can be found--even mighty Germany has players who are Turkish, Polish and Ghanaian--but some of it needs to come from Florida, Texas, Southern California and New Jersey.

And developing great American players doesn't mean having kids join travel teams and academies at an early age. It means creating a culture where kids have a soccer ball at their feet in every spare moment--at lunchtime in the schoolyard, after school in the park, in organized practices but, just as importantly, in pickup games in the playground, where true creativity flourishes.

But even if all that happens, chances are slim at best that the U.S. will ever win the World Cup. Those Belgians, who so outclassed the U.S. the other night, and the miraculous Dutch, in their brilliant orange kits, have the same number of soccer world championships as the U.S.--zero.

In this game, only pain and heartbreak are guaranteed. To commit is to sign on for the journey, not the destination.

So, are we serious?

###

# THE WORLD'S GAME ON DISPLAY

###

# At the World Cup, Citizenship Becomes a Complicated Issue

#  At the World Cup, Citizenship Becomes a Complicated Issue

_By Joshua Robinson_

_May 30, 2014_

Jurgen Klinsmann was less than a year into his job as coach of the U.S. national soccer team when he decided the talent pool was on the shallow side. Not one to be constrained by national borders or passports, the German World Cup legend went for the next best thing: bringing in Americans from abroad to wear the stars and stripes in Brazil.

But Klinsmann wasn't the only one to go down that road. Thanks to rule changes over the past decade, building a World Cup squad has turned into an international talent-grab.

Players are no longer just born into national teams--they are recruited to them, too. Since 2007, FIFA has processed 174 association changes for male players, as of late March. Now, six players on Klinsmann's 23-man World Cup squad have represented countries other than the U.S. at youth level.

The most recent addition to Klinsmann's camp was Tampa, Fla.-born Julian Green, a product of the Bayern Munich academy. The U.S. secured his commitment to the cause in March. Like Fabian Johnson and Jermaine Jones, two other U.S. players with ties to Germany, Green is the son of an American serviceman who was stationed in Europe. Klinsmann also took Mix Diskerud, a former Norway prospect, and Aron Johannsson, who has represented Iceland. (Neither country qualified for the World Cup.)

Under the rules of soccer's world governing body, FIFA, it is perfectly legal for players to switch allegiances one time, provided they meet a couple of key criteria. The first, of course, is that they are citizens of their new countries. (In most cases, it means holding two passports at the time of their first call-up for either country.) The second is that they may not have represented their original country in a competitive game at the senior level.

In other words, you can play for a country's under-20 or under-17 team and then switch at any point, regardless of age. Even friendly (or exhibition) matches at the senior level are OK. But play in, say, a World Cup qualifier and you're anchored to that national team forever, even if you're never called up to the squad again.

The rule used to be that a player generally could change associations once up to his 21st birthday, with his allegiance set in stone after that. (The age was 18 until 2003.) But since a proposal that was approved in 2009, the age limit has been lifted.

The number of players applying for association changes jumped, according to FIFA. In 2008, it processed eight. In 2010, the number was 30.

The association behind the rule change--Algeria--should come as no surprise. Algeria is one of the world's specialists in foreign-born national team players. Of the 23 players Algeria took to the 2010 World Cup, 17 were born in France, with about half representing France at youth level. Since 2007, 12 players have switched their allegiance to Algeria, more than any other country other than Turkey.

Several other former French colonies take a similar approach. Indeed, the busiest channels for switches include France to Algeria and to Senegal.

But this solution isn't just for players who can't quite crack one national team and look for another. The path from small countries to teams with better hopes of qualifying for the World Cup is also well worn. Over the past seven years, Northern Ireland has seen seven players defect to the Republic of Ireland, which is always more likely to make major tournaments.

"It's a question of personal freedom," said Mohammed Raouraoua, the president of the Algerian Football Association who proposed the 2009 change and a member of FIFA's executive committee.

For more than a decade, he has lobbied to make it easier for immigrants and the children of immigrants to play for their host countries or their parents' and grandparents' homelands. "The flip side," he added, "is that it allows teams to raise the level of international soccer and to improve the quality of international competitions."

Things do get complicated--like if the player has yet to acquire the new citizenship at the time he wants to switch. Under those circumstances, he must also spend five consecutive years in his new country after the age of 18.

This slows down the process, but hardly makes it impossible. Just ask Spain, the defending World Cup champ.

Already stacked with soccer riches, La Roja managed to pad its ranks with Diego Costa, La Liga champion Atletico Madrid's top marksman--while keeping him out of his native Brazilian squad in the process. He qualified for Spain after spending five years there and picked up a new passport last year. His two appearances for Brazil had come in friendlies, which don't count toward establishing allegiance.

Costa's final decision to play for Spain--complete with a college-football-style letter of intent--came just as Brazil was trying to call him up for a couple more friendlies last October.

For Spain, it was a huge addition. In Brazil, it was nothing short of treason. Unlike native Brazilians who have played for other countries in the past, Costa would have been a certainty to make the starting 11--especially given the side's lack of firepower.

"He is turning his back on a dream of millions by not representing our five-time champions in a World Cup in Brazil," said Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari at the time.

Should it all pan out for Costa, despite a hamstring injury, he wouldn't even be the first Brazilian-born player to lift a major trophy for Spain. Sao Paulo native Marcos Senna was an important member of the Euro 2008-winning squad.

According to his new teammates, Costa wasn't expressly recruited. "He feels Spanish," Atletico Madrid forward David Villa said. "He's spent his whole professional career here."

Then again, no country will admit to making a policy of seeking out potentially eligible castoffs from larger national teams. "We don't have a systematic research process," Algeria's Raouraoua said. "Each case is different. Sometimes it comes from the parents, sometimes it comes from the player, sometimes the federation reaches out."

Asked whether he worried about players Algeria might lose to other countries, Raouraoua rattled off several players with Algerian roots who had played for France.

"We pride ourselves that there are players like [Karim] Benzema or [Samir] Nasri playing for the French national team. Or [Zinedine] Zidane," he said. "I think that the role that they can play on the social front, for integration and immigration, is marvelous."

###

# The Problem With World Cup Referees

#  The Problem With World Cup Referees

_By Joshua Robinson_

_June 10, 2014_

Imagine the U.S. playing for World Cup survival on June 26 against powerhouse Germany. Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley line up on one side, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Mesut Ozil on the other.

And the referee is a Tahitian named Norbert Hauata. He has never before been to the World Cup. Usually he referees squads like Dragon and Tamarii Faa'a back in Tahiti, a country that has never sent a team to the World Cup.

It could happen.

As an alternate in the pool of 33 World Cup referees in Brazil this month, Hauata is a pulled hamstring away from the biggest stage in the game. And it isn't just the alternates who lack experience. Among the 24 official referees are several who have never called games involving big-name teams and players.

The world's most popular sporting event uses a more democratic than meritocratic process for choosing referees. While the World Cup's 32 teams must play their way into the tournament through a grueling two-year qualifying process, FIFA, the sport's governing body, pulls referees from more than 40 countries out of a sense of fairness to all of its member associations. It is similar to how basketball's world governing body plucks officials from around the world to work the Olympic tournament.

It's a contrast from the meritocracy that determines who officiates the postseason for major U.S. sports.

Some critics believe that World Cup games ought to use referees with experience ejecting superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo. "A referee from Brazil, Argentina, Italy, England, week in, week out, they are refereeing high-profile matches," said David Elleray, a retired English Premier League referee.

Steve Javie, ESPN refereeing analyst and a former NBA official, said, "I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have the best soccer officials there."

"I can understand people making that criticism," said Jim Boyce, the chairman of FIFA's referees committee.

He notes that all referees chosen for the World Cup stand atop their respective associations, even if those associations feature far-from-elite competition. "I think there'd be bigger criticism if referees from around the world who received top marks weren't given the same opportunity."

The performance of any single World Cup referee might not matter so much if the sport employed video replay the way that all professional leagues in the U.S. do. Or if, as in U.S. professional sports, each game featured several referees capable of overruling each other.

Perhaps befitting a sport founded in England, soccer is an officiating monarchy. Each game features a single referee whose calls can't be challenged on the field or--until this World Cup--assisted by goal-line technology. Although two linesmen run along the edge of the pitch raising flags to indicate offside and fouls, the referee is free to ignore those calls.

In a sport that is hard to track statistically, little data exist showing whether referees from nonelite soccer countries are more prone to error.

But anecdotal evidence is rich. In a match against Slovenia four years ago, the U.S. scored a goal that television replay clearly showed was legitimate. But referee Koman Coulibaly of Mali (whose national team is currently ranked 57th in the world) disallowed it, forcing the U.S. to settle for a draw when a victory would have nearly guaranteed it a spot in the knockout rounds.

"It was the guy's first World Cup game, so maybe he got a little caught up in the moment," midfielder Landon Donovan said at the time. "You can't take away a good goal from a team."

"If it's an NFL playoff game and there's a call that's in question, there will be a statement by the league from the referees," then U.S. manager Bob Bradley said. "FIFA operates differently."

In match against Germany in 2010, everyone knew that Englishman Frank Lampard's shot off the crossbar crossed the line in the round of 16. Everyone, that is, but referee Jorge Larrionda. He didn't award the goal, which would have tied the game 2-2. England went on to lose 4-1 and was eliminated. A Uruguayan, Larrionda had never refereed games in Western Europe, home of what's widely accepted as soccer's major leagues.

Even accomplished officials have ugly days. The English Premier League's Howard Webb, widely regarded as one of the most experienced refs in the world, was heavily criticized during the 2010 World Cup final for failing to eject the Netherlands' Nigel de Jong for putting his boot squarely into Xabi Alonso's chest.

Coaches and players are reluctant to complain openly about soccer referees because doing so can invite penalty. During a crucial game between Manchester City and Barcelona in this season's UEFA Champions League referee Jonas Eriksson appeared to blow a major call against City.

City manager Manuel Pellegrini suggested that night that Eriksson wasn't qualified to handle the game--because he came from nonelite Sweden. "I think it was not a good idea to put a referee from Sweden in a so important match," Pellegrini said after the game. "I think that there [is] more important football than in Sweden in Europe. A big game, with two important teams, I think maybe that kind of game needs a referee with more experience."

Pellegrini later apologized for his comments and was slapped with a two-game sideline ban.

What bothered Pellegrini is that the Champions League--Europe's most elite tournament--draws referees from all over Europe, rather than based strictly on performance or on experience calling big games between the likes of Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

Of course, there's an element of snobbery in the argument that refereeing experience counts only if it involves games between the world's best clubs. But generally speaking, the distinction between amateurs and professionals is money, and the English Premier League is nearly the only association that pays its referees a full-time wage and subjects them to near-full-time training under coaches and sports scientists.

Elsewhere, soccer refereeing is the hobby of men who tend to hold down day jobs. Italian referee Nicola Rizzoli is an architect. Peter O'Leary of New Zealand, a high-school science teacher. And Eriksson of Sweden just happens to be independently wealthy.

Most referees at this summer's World Cup had to make special arrangements. Australia's Ben Williams, for instance, took six months' leave without pay from his job as a physical education teacher to focus on the World Cup.

FIFA doesn't discuss what it will pay referees at this World Cup. But in 2006, FIFA's then secretary-general, Urs Linsi, told Reuters that referees received $38,000 each for that year's tournament. FIFA's 2010 World Cup financial report shows that it spent a total of $14 million on "refereeing matters," which is on par with the prize money it awarded to teams that finished fifth to eighth.

For this year's World Cup, FIFA started out in September 2011 with 52 referees. Over the next two years, it whittled that down to 25 referees and eight alternates. The original bunch arrived with different views "about everything--about positioning, about interpretation," said Massimo Busacca, head of FIFA's refereeing department.

Besides demanding super levels of fitness--the average referee runs between 6-7.5 miles a game--FIFA requires them to attend 16 training seminars in the buildup to the World Cup. They must also be proficient in English.

"It's been a long process," said Enrique Osses, a Chilean referee preparing for his first World Cup. "They observe you closely during games, test your English language skills. It's like being under a magnifying glass."

Between January and the tournament, World Cup referees were required to attend three intensive seminars in Zurich, where they were they sat in classroom sessions for half the day and ran drills for the other half.

"We do physical training, we can watch videos in a classroom, but there's nothing better than being out on a training field and actually replicating what we do on match days," said the Premier League's Webb.

Working one day in March with a youth team from FC Zurich, the referees ran from one end of the field to the other, awarding penalty kicks at each end. FIFA's Busacca watched closely, looking for physical performance, judgment, and positioning. He yelled at the refs when they got it wrong--and when they got it right. Premier League refs, especially Webb, stood out.

"Very good," Busacca shouted at Webb in full sprint. "You are faster than the players!"

Once the World Cup begins, the process for referees advancing beyond the group stage is meritocratic. In that competition, European referees fare well. In 2010, only nine of 24 referees in the group stage were European. But seven of those nine made the cut to 16 referees for the next stage of play.

For the first time, this World Cup will use technology to settle close calls over whether a ball crossed the goal line, possibly shielding referees from controversies that can rage for decades.

Germany continues to wonder what might have been if a Soviet linesman had gotten a better view of what turned out to be England's winning goal in the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley Stadium.

Replays aren't fully conclusive, but they appear to show the ball bouncing off the crossbar and hitting the line rather than crossing it, which means the goal shouldn't have stood. To this day, Germans still refer to a phantom goal as "ein Wembley Tor."

###

# The World Cup of Exhaustion

#  The World Cup of Exhaustion

_By Joshua Robinson_

_June 16, 2014_

Salvador, Brazil--On paper, Monday's clash between Portugal and Germany should be one of the gems of the World Cup's first round. A team built for Cristiano Ronaldo, currently the best player in the world, against one of the most fearsome units around, a souped-up machine with Bayern Munich stars at its core. It promises to be tense and physical, with goals at a premium.

Then again, didn't we think the same thing about Spain against the Netherlands? That is, before it turned into a 5-1 Dutch blowout.

Much of the excuses in Spain have been about sheer exhaustion--La Roja's playmakers, Xavi and Iniesta, for instance, looked sluggish all day. Burnout could yet play the most important role in Monday's matchup between two of the top teams at the tournament. Portugal's Ronaldo spent much of his pre-match news conference discussing his health, while Germany had a player airlifted to a medical checkup over the weekend.

This is one of the truths of the World Cup today: With virtually all of the best players piled into a few clubs that often play twice a week through grueling, 10-month seasons, they arrive at summer tournaments banged up and running on fumes. The list of players who reported to Brazil half-injured is enough for an all-star 11, including Ronaldo, Uruguay's Luis Suarez, Spain's Diego Costa and England's Wayne Rooney.

"I would like to play without any pain," Ronaldo said. "But that's impossible. Since I've been playing, I don't think I've ever gone a game without feeling pain. This is the burden of my work."

Ronaldo is one of the hardest working men in soccer. He appeared in 56 games this season for Portugal and Real Madrid, which played the maximum number of matches in its domestic cup and the UEFA Champions League on top of a 38-game La Liga campaign.

The Champions League can be the most taxing. It isn't just the possibility of 13 extra games; it's the ripples that come from their scheduling. Those matches, played against the best sides in Europe, land on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, between weekends of domestic league play. The travel can take a team anywhere from Madrid to Moscow, leading to many sleepless postgame nights.

Sixteen players who started the final in late May are also in the World Cup-including Ronaldo, Spain's Sergio Ramos, Argentina's Angel di Maria and Germany's Sami Khedira.

"Players arrive exhausted after 60 games. You can be sure of that," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said. "They can't absorb the same preparation as someone who played 20 games."

This Germany squad has played a combined 629 league games this season, an average of 27.3 per player, according to Opta Sports. And that doesn't reflect the load carried by the stars from Bayern Munich, who went all the way in the German Cup and reached the semifinals of the Champions League. Bastian Schweinsteiger, for instance, made 43 appearances, despite an injury that kept him out for much of December and January. His Bayern teammate Philipp Lahm made 52. So it came as no surprise that Germany's list of nagging injuries followed them to the World Cup.

"It's affected leading players, Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm, Khedira, myself, which means we weren't always available," goalkeeper Manuel Neuer said. "But we were constantly attached to the team."

For Spain, the exhaustion and its consequences were even more dramatic. La Roja's 23 players had a combined 684 league appearances between them this season for an average of 29.8, which didn't include cup competitions. Xavi played 63 games for Barcelona and Spain--not counting the Confederations Cup last summer. Ramos, who was badly beaten on at least two goals in the Netherlands game, also played 63.

The Netherlands' Robin van Persie, meanwhile, spent half the season on the sidelines nursing a series of ailments. He returned from a seven-week layoff in early May and immediately found early-season form. And with only 35 games in his legs this year, the 30-year-old was one of the most dynamic players on the field on Friday, scoring twice.

It was telling, too, that in a game so physically dominated by the Dutch that only four of their starters played the knockout rounds of the Champions League--as opposed to all 11 Spain starters.

Of course, no player likes the idea of telling his coach that he is too tired to play in the World Cup. But for many, a 60-game season can mean a huge decision in the 61st, no matter which tournament it's in.

"If I feel anything during the match--which I'm sure I won't--I'll be the first to tell the coach," Ronaldo said. "I would never risk my career for one match."

###

# Goodbye, Tiki-Taka; Hello, Fast-Break Soccer

#  Goodbye, Tiki-Taka; Hello, Fast-Break Soccer

_By Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson_

_June 19, 2014_

Rio de Janeiro--The opening week of the World Cup has already produced its share of memorable sights. There was Brazil's joyous win in the opening game, Robin van Persie's swan-dive header against Spain and an unlikely victory for a plucky little upstart known as Team USA.

But the most extraordinary spectacle of the tournament so far is how international soccer has been transformed before our eyes.

In the space of just seven days in Brazil, the patient, possession-oriented style of play that has dominated this sport for the last six years has given way to a breakneck brand of soccer that looks like it has been outfitted with a jet engine.

From the Netherlands' high-tempo destruction of Spain to Switzerland's late surge against Ecuador, the overriding theme of this World Cup is that the deadliest attacking strategy in the game right now is a dash of pure, unadulterated speed. By hanging back on defense, baiting opponents to attack and then rushing forward as soon as the ball is recovered, these quick-strike attacks hit the opposition before they have a chance to reset on defense.

This is hardly novel. The counterattack has been one of the game's central tactics for more than a century. But what has changed is the speed of these lightning raids and the number of players involved. It isn't just speedy forwards racing through on goal, but midfielders and even fullbacks in a coordinated blur that resembles a Formula One Grand Prix.

"It's how the game is evolving," said Ray Houghton, a former Ireland midfielder. "You're seeing teams attacking with pace, they're playing at a high tempo and sprinting forward on the counter attack. It's very difficult to stop."

You don't have to tell that to Spain. But the Spanish--who were eliminated after their 2-0 loss to Chile on Wednesday--aren't the only ones who have been slow to catch up to this new era of hurry-up offense.

Uruguay, which reached the 2010 semifinals, dropped its opener after giving up three second-half goals to an all-out blitz by Costa Rica. Ecuador looked to have earned a tie in its opening game until a blistering box-to-box breakaway produced a last-minute winner for Switzerland's Haris Seferovic. Even Italy's famously stout defense was caught short by a turbocharged counter from England.

In all, there already have been five goals scored on warp-speed attacks known as fast breaks, in which a team takes no more than three passes and eight seconds to advance the ball from its own half of the field into the opposition net. In contrast, the entire 2010 World Cup produced six such goals.

"Teams are taking more risks and the transition play is quicker," said former France coach Gerard Houllier. "So goals are coming from fast, quick attacks."

There were signs of a reordering in the international game last year, when Brazil outmuscled Spain 3-0 in a fast and frenetic Confederations Cup final. But more than that, it represents merely the latest shift in the fundamental struggle between pace and power that has come to define modern soccer.

The recent history of the World Cup provides a stark view of this dynamic at work. When France hoisted the trophy in 1998, it was a triumph that owed less to the graceful brilliance of Zinedine Zidane and more to the brute force of a French squad that averaged a tournament-high 19 fouls a game.

Four years later, France was ousted at the group stage of a tournament that showcased technical skill as Brazil was crowned champion after possessing the ball for 57% of its games. Italy's victory in 2006 was based on solid defense and counterattacking, before Spain outpassed everyone to win in 2010.

The cyclical nature of this tournament may explain why some coaches have set up their teams for just such a change. Louis van Gaal, the Netherlands head coach, was pilloried for abandoning the country's traditional 4-3-3 formation in favor of a five-man defensive line designed to launch rapid counterattacks from deep.

As his players terrorized Spain on breakaways, hitting 69 long passes toward speedy forwards van Persie and Arjen Robben, he was hailed as a genius.

"Spain were always going to come at us so we catch them on the counter," van Gaal said. "My players did it perfectly. It's far better than we ever expected."

For many observers, this injection of speed has been a long time coming. Even as Spain drew _ol es _from fans world-wide for their technical wizardry, there was a sense that their _tiki-taka_ , square-ball approach had gotten dull.

As the technical gap between Spain and everyone else has diminished, attributes like speed, acceleration and brute strength have come to the fore.

"You've still got to be able to pass the ball and keep possession," Houghton said. "But once you can do that, pace and power, those things can make a huge difference."

###

# A World Cup That Doesn't Want Any of Its Matches to End

#  A World Cup That Doesn't Want Any of Its Matches to End

_By Joshua Robinson_

_July 1, 2014_

Salvador, Brazil—With Belgium's win over the U.S. on Tuesday night, the longest round of 16 in the history of the World Cup came to a close. No, _really_. It was still just eight games, but it came with an extra two-and-a half hours of action.

Until this tournament, barely a third of World Cup knockout-round games had required more time since the modern format was adopted in 1986. But in this iteration of the tournament, 90 minutes have not been enough to deliver a winner on _five_ occasions.

As lesser-ranked teams have held their own against on-paper favorites, a round that used to be infamous for mismatches has produced four days of incredible tension. Five times the 22 players on the field have had to settle in for another 30 minutes of work in the Brazilian heat.

Already there have been more periods of extra time in this World Cup than there were during the entirety of the tournament in South Africa four years ago. And guess what? There are eight games still to come.

Jermaine Jones, right, and the U.S. team played 120 minutes against Belgium. (Getty/AFP)

Costa Rica and Brazil had to put their respective populations through the agony of penalty shootouts after extra time. Germany and Argentina managed to finish their business within the extra 30 minutes. "You need to catch your breath after a game like that," Germany coach Joachim Low said after his side found a late winner to beat Algeria 2-1 on Monday. "And at the end it was sheer force of will that got us the win."

But the drama that unfolded here Tuesday night between the U.S. and Belgium was actually the most remarkable of them all. The freewheeling offensive soccer that had seemed to end with the group stage of the tournament made an emphatic return in extra time. After the match ended scoreless after 90 minutes, all three goals materialized in the space of 20 minutes in extra time.

Setting aside the games that went beyond regulation, the entire Round of 16 has been a hair-raising experience. Colombia took a 2-0 lead in its match against Uruguay, then seemed content to sit back to defend the lead. The result: Three outstanding chances from Uruguay. France also had to wait anxiously until the 79th minute for its decisive goal in a 2-0 victory over Nigeria—a victory that only came courtesy of a blunder by Nigerian goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama.

The Dutch, too, managed to create a giant pile of fingernail shrapnel back home.

Trailing 1-0 against Mexico until an equalizer in the 87th minute, the _Oranje_ were seconds from an extra period when Rafa Marquez gave up a penalty kick for tripping Arjen Robben. (Or Robben took a dive, depending on which part of the world you were watching the game in.)

On Tuesday, there would have been no extra time were it not for the heroics of U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard, who made 12 saves in regulation. He pushed shots over the crossbar with his fingertips and blocked a one-on-one with the studs on left cleat.

His reactions to each shot were something of a real-time pressure gauge for the Americans. Every shot, on target or not, came with several seconds of shouting and pointing. Defender Matt Besler was on the end of most of the rollickings, though each one concluded with a friendly pat on the backside. In any case, Howard was right to be concerned: it was Besler's turnover to Romelu Lukaku that led to Belgium's first goal.

In the dying minutes of this match, Clint Dempsey nearly turned extra-time into a penalty shootout. With Belgium 2-1 up, a cleverly worked free kick put Dempsey in position to tie the game. Instead, he drew a point-blank stop from Belgium's Thibaut Courtois.

There had been 154 goals at this World Cup until that point. And with all the extra time running out, he'd prevented the 155th.

###

# The Best (And Worst) Fans in Brazil

#  The Best (And Worst) Fans in Brazil

_By WSJ Staff_

_July 11, 2014_

One of the great joys of covering the 2014 World Cup in Brazil is the opportunity to meet soccer fans from 32 different nations. And then, after they're gone, to talk about them behind their backs.

As much as this global event is a showcase for soccer brilliance and tactical innovation, it's also an incredible venue for measuring the differences between the various national fan cultures. So in advance of Sunday's final between Germany and Argentina, The Journal asked the members of its reporting team to send their honest impressions of the fan groups from all 32 countries. What follows is a completely unscientific survey of their findings.

Some countries, like Argentina, drew lengthy and colorful responses from the panel. Others, like Honduras, didn't leave much of an impression. And our reporting team couldn't think of anything to say about fans from Algeria and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here is their report:

**Argentina**

The "most numerous" fans from any nation, apart from host Brazil, were "intent on giving their guys as close to a home-team advantage as possible." While they weren't always the best-behaved fans (the word "obnoxious" turned up), they also showed a sensitive side. "I've never seen as many men crying as when Argentina beat the Netherlands," one panelist said.

**Australia**

Despite a fast exit, Aussies were undaunted in their quest to "have a good time" and "drain Brazil's stocks of lager" while wearing "sunnies and singlets." They "traveled around Brazil quite a bit" and "were knowledgeable about their team, even though soccer is their fourth- or fifth-favorite sport."

**Belgium**

Fans of the Red Devils were small in number but knew "how to impose themselves." At the U.S. match, "two Belgium fans were as loud as five Americans." They had "really cool costumes" and one of them even landed a modeling contract.

**Brazil**

Several observers said they were underwhelmed by the host fans, who were "very calm, relatively quiet and a little nervous about their team's prospects." One panelist even said Brazilians were "not as emotionally enthralled by soccer as the world is led to believe." When their team wasn't playing, they still "packed stadiums and picked sides" and "would cheer for every attack and boo whenever the ball was kicked back defensively."

**Cameroon**

These fans turned out to be incredibly good sports. "They seemed very happy and laughed together a lot." They could be seen "on the metro talking to Argentines" and making a friendly argument that Samuel Eto'o "is better than Lionel Messi." Sadly, the Portuguese word for their country, Camarões, "is also the plural for shrimp," which they were reminded of "100 times a day" after losing to Brazil.

**Chile**

While known for being quiet and laid back, Chileans "get extremely worked up" about soccer. A group of ticketless Chilean fans got global attention for trying to "bum-rush a stadium in Rio." Most were "very loud and a lot of fun." A lot of people "wanted them to shut up" after hearing their favorite chant _"Chi Chi Chi, Le Le Le"_ for days, "well past midnight." But they also won creativity points: While most South American countries sing the same songs, "Chile at least added in some stuff about hating Argentina."

**Colombia**

"Loud, colorful and seemed to be having the time of their lives." Drew lots of attention for wearing Carlos Valderrama-style wigs. One panelist assumed that the wigs are "issued to everyone who leaves the country." One observer noted that some Colombians "seemed inclined to fight," but that they made up for it by being "quite possibly the most insanely good-looking fan base in international sports."

**Costa Rica**

While the team excelled in Brazil, there "couldn't have been more than 75 in the whole stadium" in the last game the few that did show "didn't seem to expect much" and "ended up having a party in the corner."

**Croatia**

"Maybe the easiest fans to pick out, barring the Dutch, because of their tablecloth-checkered jerseys." They were "nearly all men." One panelist reported seeing some Croatian fans trying to "sneak flares into the stadium."

**Ecuador**

These fans "just sort of quietly followed their team" and didn't make much of an impression. "They were sort of like every other South American country, but less colorful than Colombia, less passionate than Argentina and less fun than Chile." When they were eliminated by France, our panelists say, "they just sort of quietly accepted it and went back home."

**England**

Lived up to their lofty expectations for being "sophisticated football watchers" who are "self-deprecating," but also prone to "overdrinking and being just very loud."

**France**

Seemed "almost surprised their team did so well." Looked at home in Brasilia where "there wasn't much to do apart from sitting in restaurants sipping wine." They were "enthusiastic anthem singers" and "quick to break into the _Marseillaise_."

**Germany**

Fans are "very cool, calm and collected" and "restrained in victory." They don't get as loud as the English and won praise for bringing "German stadium culture" with them. They traveled with giant flags marking which parts of the country they were from and continued trying to hang them in stadiums even as stewards tore them down.

**Ghana**

Fans earned praise for having "this great drum and horn band that played throughout the match." Our panelists report that they were "always smiling while the game went on," even when things went sour.

**Greece**

"Good-humored" and "just going with the flow," which was understandable given that few expected anything from their team. The Greeks clearly "came for the party."

**Honduras**

Hondurans were hard to spot. In fact, "if you met a Honduran fan in Brazil, chances are they were Brazilian, or from Los Angeles." That said, the "Honduran-Americans were out in force" and their "small but passionate base made an effort to be seen and heard."

**Iran**

"Obsessed with taking selfies," these fans spent much of their time during a narrow loss to Argentina "wandering the aisles posing for pictures with the pitch in the background." They also showed an outsize disdain for soccer referees, "howling at every single decision that went against them." One of the most evenly split fan bases between men and women. One panelist said the Iranians did a brave job of communicating with locals despite "struggling with Portuguese pronunciations."

**Italy**

One of the biggest mysteries of the tournament. Fans of the Azzurri were "barely glimpsed," which isn't surprising given that "they officially sold 200 tickets for their opener against England." In fact, "the thinking was that a lot of the Italian fans were actually Brazilian and Argentine Italians."

**Ivory Coast**

One of the most elusive fan bases. Did, however, show "dedication to body paint," as one fan appeared at multiple matches "with what looked like every inch of his upper body covered in team colors."

**Japan**

The Japanese were "the cleanest of the World Cup fans" who "impressed the world" by tidying up after themselves at the stadiums. They were "very organized" in the stands, but "very excited, too." They also earned accolades for having the "craziest costumes" which "usually involved masks, face-painting and some sort of elaborate headgear" including "some dressed as sushi," which one panelist found "terrifying."

**South Korea**

Win or lose (it was actually lose or tie), Koreans made lots of noise as they "cheered incessantly" and "banged away on the inflatable bang sticks" as some "wore little battery-operated devil horns that lit up their sections as night fell." One panelist was impressed by a "group rendition of a strident part of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9."

**Mexico**

Despite refusing "to rethink an offensive chant," Mexican fans were universally adored as "some of the nicest and most polite people" and the "loudest non-Brazilian fans encountered at the World Cup." They were "remarkably well coordinated in their chants and outfits" and one fan in particular was "so committed he was wearing a burro costume that made it look like he was riding it."

Fans of the Netherlands cheer on their team in Brazil. (Getty)

**Netherlands**

The Dutch were "my favorites—sophisticated, cool and fun. Plus they have their endearing 'Hup' chant." Dutch fans were "always easy to spot in their bright orange jerseys, hats, socks, sports coats, ties and, yes, underpants." At campsites, "the Heineken flowed "and the bitterballen (Dutch meatballs) were plentiful." Other panelists found them "astonishingly reserved during their team's matches" and not as thickly massed as usual.

**Nigeria**

Before playing France, a small group of Nigerians lacked tickets—but not confidence. "They said Nigeria would beat France and win the World Cup." One panelist said he met one Nigeria fan in a hotel elevator, "but he was from Manhattan."

**Portugal**

Even though they "didn't travel in big numbers," the Portuguese got a huge cheering boost from "Brazilians of Portuguese descent" who were also "very mild-mannered." As a whole, "their team was unimpressive, and so were the fans."

**Russia**

In a relatively small number of encounters, our panelists described Russian fans as mostly "big men" who "looked like security guards" and were "unhappy."

**Spain**

After winning the 2010 World Cup, many Spanish fans were so optimistic, they didn't bother showing up for the group stage—which their team didn't survive. Some Spanish fans showed up at the Brazil-Germany semifinal, including "one poor soul with a Spanish flag" hidden in an "ocean of yellow jerseys."

**Switzerland**

While the Swiss fans were "pretty subdued and barely present in the host cities," some were spotted on shopping excursions in Manaus where they "smiled quietly and tried not to faint on the steamy streets."

**Uruguay**

"Ecstatic" after their win over England, they "spent about an hour after the match singing songs and jumping up and down" before heading out for "pizza and beer." After Luis Suárez was kicked out for biting, there was "mostly indignation," followed by an argument that "far worse things happen on football pitches." Some panelists found them to be the "most fanatical and jingoistic" fans in Brazil.

**U.S.**

Clapped "for everything." Screams of USA! USA! made the stadium "as loud as Madison Square Garden" even when the team was down 2-0 to Belgium. These fans stuck to their "I believe that we will win" chant which one panelist called "typically American." Other panelists said they "reached a bit too far with chants" that haven't been developed "with decades of heartbreak."

—Beckey Bright, Jonathan Clegg, Will Connors, Matthew Cowley, Loretta Chao, Jeff Cullen, Will Davies, Matthew Futterman, Jason Gay, Paul Kiernan, Patricia Kowsmann, Jeffrey Lewis, John Lyons, Luciana Magalhaes, Joshua Robinson and Paulo Trevisani contributed to this article.

###

# Soccer Goes Into Attack Mode

#  Soccer Goes Into Attack Mode

_By Matthew Futterman_

_July 10, 2014_

Rio de Janeiro _—_ The first signal that this was going to be a transformative World Cup arrived on the second day of the tournament. That's when Holland's Robin van Persie caught up with a masterful 51-yard bomb of a pass from the midfield, then nailed a diving header into Spain's goal, part of a 5-1 thrashing __ of the defending world champions.

The next day, giant-killer Costa Rica __ swarmed a defensive Uruguayan team with three second-half goals, punishing the 2010 semifinalists for their passivity. Two days later, U.S. captain Clint Dempsey scored just 29 seconds into the game, his ears still buzzing with the parting words of coach Jurgen Klinsmann just before kickoff: "Attack!"

This week brought the ultimate onslaught—Germany's merciless, 7-1 thrashing of host Brazil, which brought the whole concept of the "attack" to an entirely new level.

After years of timid, low-scoring play, that one word has become the theme of Brazil's World Cup. When the history of this tournament is written, the sport's cognoscenti will likely point to it as an event that changed the game. The finalists, Germany and Argentina, have survived the most offense-oriented tournament of the modern era, a series of games where playing defensively almost guaranteed an early exit.

Germany's Toni Kroos on the attack. (Getty)

"There is no clear defensive strategy anymore," said France coach Didier Deschamps, whose young, lightning-fast team romped through its group, scoring eight goals in its first two games. "I remember a few years ago, there were some very boring World Cup matches. Not this year. Now it's end-to-end soccer, it goes from one box to the other, and it's really entertaining," he said.

Even Argentina's triumph Wednesday over the Netherlands, a scoreless draw decided on penalties, featured a series of onslaughts that perfectly organized defenses thwarted before they turned dangerous. Collectively, the players covered some 275,000 meters up and down the field during the 120-minute marathon, or roughly 172 miles.

"There are players who are sore, beaten and tired," Argentina coach Alejandro Sabella said after the match. "It is the result of a war."

The attacking style also helped the sport earn its first full-throated embrace from the American sporting public. Pundits have been debating for weeks whether soccer has finally reached a watershed moment with U.S. audiences. All those decades of mop-haired American kids swarming after the ball in their local leagues were finally bearing fruit. TV ratings soared, up 43% since 2010. Wednesday's semifinal scored a 4.3 in overnight ratings compared with 2.8 four years ago.

Skeptics argued that these games were a fluke, that Americans artificially benefited from an ideal time zone; Team USA made it to the final 16; the NFL, NBA, MLB and Nascar have little to fear.

Even if it turns out that Americans still haven't caught up with the rest of the world, here is what the past six weeks have proved: Soccer is catching up with America. The games were fast, furious and physical, ideal for the razzle-dazzle of TV and the Web—just what Americans have always loved in their sports.

Fans abroad, too, had been frustrated with so many matches with so little scoring, with players moving the ball up the field at a slow jog, tapping measured passes to their teammates, collapsing to the ground in full writhe.

A team that dared to play passively for even the briefest period of a match was guaranteed to hear derisive howls from the Brazilian crowds, no matter how hot and humid it was or how tactically intelligent slowing down the game might have proven.

"Every team has realized you need a balance, that you need to attack and defend," said Avram Grant, the former manager of the English club Chelsea. "If all you do is defend, you lose."

The most basic measure of aggressiveness is the number of goals scored in the group stage of the tournament, before teams inevitably tighten up in knockout games where a single goal usually spells doom. (Of course, anyone who watched Belgium's 38-shot bombardment of the U.S. or the Netherlands' 20-shot assault on Costa Rica wouldn't call those matches passive, despite the limited scoring).

This World Cup produced a stunning 2.83 goals a game in the group stage, a 35% increase over 2010. Since then, the overall scoring average is 2.7, compared with the snooze-worthy 2.27 goals four years ago.

There are other, more subtle numbers that show how much more open and attack-minded this World Cup has been than previous tournaments, especially the one played just four years ago, highlighting how quickly the game at its highest level transformed.

For instance, teams stopped getting bogged down in their own half of the field as often. Through the semifinals, the number of unsuccessful passes in the defensive half had dropped to 28.9 a game from 32.2. And when they got across midfield, they were increasingly attacking as fast as they could in the open spaces on the wings.

Long-range passes from the flanks, known as "open-play crosses," are becoming more popular compared with the more conservative touches through the middle of the defense, known as "through balls." The ratio of through balls to crosses fell to one through ball for every 15 crosses this year, compared with one for every 14 in 2010. Overall, the number of through balls a game has dropped to 1.8 compared with 2.28 in 2010.

"The modern game is bigger, faster, and stronger," said Marcelo Balboa, who anchored the U.S. defense in the 1990s. "When I played, teams would sort of slow down to let their playmaker catch up. You sure don't see that anymore."

How this World Cup became so much more physical, and so much faster and attack-minded than any in recent memory is a result of several shifts in the game, some of which occurred across the past two decades, while others occurred just in the last four years.

The biggest change leading to the shift in style is the quality of the athlete that is stepping on the field, said Roberto Martinez, the Spaniard who coaches Everton and analyzes games for ESPN.

"Twenty years ago the physical condition wasn't comparable to what you see today," he said. "There is more focus on ball skills, but we have also tacked on speed and strength. You have real athletes playing this game now, and they've made it faster and more physical. You have so much more pace and power on the ball and that lets you attack."

Case in point, James Rodríguez of Colombia, the 22-year-old striker blessed with speed, size and brilliant touch. He scored a tournament-leading six goals in five matches.

Balboa, who is 6-feet tall and thick, said he and his partner in central defense, Alexi Lalas, who is a broad-shouldered 6-foot-3, felt like giants on the field in 1994. Now they would be merely average.

Yet it's how those athletes have been playing once they take the field that has made for the most dramatic changes. Throughout the 1990s, and into the early 21st century, the most successful teams were the ones who had the best playmakers and center forwards in the middle of the field, players like Romario and Bebeto for Brazil, or France's Zinedine Zidane. These were the field generals, and their teams rarely attacked without them running the show, even if that meant waiting for them to catch up.

However, these teams could be beaten by an opponent that clumped its defenders in the middle, like Italy, the 2006 world champions, whose "Catenaccio"—literally, "door bolt"—aimed to cut down any team that tried to find an offensive flow in the heart of the field.

With so little space left in the middle, the stars that teams normally relied on to lead the attack began drifting to the wings. That's where they could find space. It's also where the most potent attack is an irresistible product of speed, long-range passes from the midfield, and lightning-quick crosses into the penalty area.

Twenty years ago, it's likely that Cristiano Ronaldo, would have been leading a centralized attack. Today Ronaldo, like the Netherlands' Arjen Robben, or Brazil's Neymar, or Germany's Thomas Müller or Colombia's Rodríguez, may start in the center of the field, but heat maps produced through video tracking show they spend most of the matches searching for openings on the left or the right. Among the semifinalists, only Argentina's otherworldly forward Lionel Messi does most of his handiwork in the middle of the field.

"The best teams now, they have a couple of skilled guys in the middle, but their fastest and most creative players are on the outside," Balboa said. "And that's tough to keep up with when the play is moving so fast."

That has been especially true in the heat and humidity of Brazil, where players ran out of gas quickly and so many of the defenses became stretched. This led to yawning gaps in the field, wide open for the taking.

"This game is ultimately all about space, creating it, finding it, exploiting it, limiting it," said Lalas, another ESPN analyst. "Where are you going to find the space most often? On the outside. And when you get the ball you go."

Finally, every World Cup is in part a reaction to the last one. Since 2008, the great obsession in international soccer has been trying to figure out how to stop Spain, the world champions in 2010 and European champions in 2008 and 2012. Along with the club team Barcelona, Spain changed the way soccer is played __ by developing a group of players whose ability to make quick, short passes was so superior that it became almost impossible for even the best teams to get the ball from them.

Sitting back and waiting for the Spanish to commit a turnover or to produce an ill-fated attack became an exercise in total frustration, since the team would eventually find a seam and pick an opponent apart. The Spanish won their last four games at the 2010 World Cup by getting a single goal—then playing keep-away. Regardless of the score, none of the games were particularly close.

At first, many skilled teams emulated parts of that possession-heavy style. Then came the counter-reaction. They decided they had only one choice: When the other team has the ball, push up and attack the ball with abandon, and when you have the ball, attack the goal as fast as you can.

That concept is at the heart of the modern German soccer machine, the heavy favorite after the clinical destruction of Brazil in the semifinal. Not only are the Germans nearly the equal of Spain when it comes to holding the ball, they defend so aggressively and attack so often that the constant assault is the team's greatest defensive weapon.

No matter the score, Sunday's final game is likely to produce a thrilling, back-and-forth final between Germany and Argentina. After its historic win against Brazil, Germany wouldn't dare play any other way. Led by Messi, who countryman Diego Maradona once described as having jet engines in his legs, Argentina gets the ball to its No. 10 and goes forward every chance it gets. Nothing puts an opposing defense on its heels like Messi with the ball in space, zooming toward the goal.

"We're in a moment where everyone is working out how to play attacking and dynamic soccer," Martinez said. "There have been times when this game has been about defense, but right now it's all about offense."

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# The Official World Cup Celebration Audit

#  The Official World Cup Celebration Audit

_By Geoff Fowler_

_July 10, 2014_

If the past month of World Cup action has taught us anything, it's that nothing elicits an emotional response quite like scoring a goal on soccer's biggest stage. Some players scream after scoring. Others leap into their teammates' arms. Still more place a soccer ball under their jersey and pretend to be pregnant. (OK, fine. Only one guy did that.)

But which celebration is most popular? The Count decided to answer that question in the only way possible: We scrutinized all 167 goals scored in the World Cup so far. The big winner was what we like to call the "arms-out run." This is when a player sticks his arms out parallel to the ground and starts running before his teammates mob him. Thirty-eight goal-scorers did this after scoring, making it the most ubiquitous celebration in Brazil.

Where exactly are these men running? To the corner of the field. Of the 167 goals, the goal-scorer took the party to the corner of the field 43% of the time. While hanging out there, three players even incorporated the corner flag into his celebration, notably when Australia's Tim Cahill boxed the flag and Klaas Jan Huntelaar of the Netherlands kicked it.

Other classic goal celebrations were less frequent. Notable underperformers include the "knee slide" (11 cases) and the "flying fist pump" (nine). But the real shortcoming of this terrific World Cup has been the dearth of dancing—ironic considering the host country. Only 11 goals (6.6%) were capped with a dance move, and most of those were courtesy of James Rodríguez and his Colombian dance machine. By contrast, a similar Journal study from the 2013 NFL season found that 9.3% of NFL players dance after a touchdown.

Of course, it's poor form to celebrate if you are losing or winning big. As a result, the aftermath of 33 goals was either a muted celebration or, worse yet, nothing at all—the most common celebration in the semifinal between Germany and Brazil.

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# BRAZIL, UP CLOSE & PERSONAL

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# Intense Versus Laid-Back: São Paulo vs. Rio

#  Intense Versus Laid-Back: Sao Paulo vs. Rio

_By Loretta Chao, Rogerio Jelmayer and Reed Johnson_

_June 11, 2014_

The World Cup soccer tournament is a showcase for fierce rivalries. Brazil against Argentina. England versus Germany.

But at this summer's contest, which is on Brazilian soil, an equally intense competition will unfold between Brazil's two biggest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Both will play marquee roles in futebol's premier event: Sao Paulo will host Thursday's opening match between Brazil and Croatia. Rio will squire the final match on July 13 at the cavernous, historic Maracana stadium.

The two cities' perpetual battle for supremacy is Brazil's version of the U.S.'s East Coast-West Coast tug of war, except that Brazil's two largest metropolises are less than 300 miles apart, about the distance from New York to Washington, D.C.

That proximity intensifies the face-off between Sao Paulo, renowned as a workaholic's paradise cluttered with residential towers and type-A personalities, and its laid-back, pleasure-loving, physically stunning neighbor.

"The comparison between San Francisco or Los Angeles to New York is perfect to describe the relationship between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro," said Marcio Moraes, 62, an economist who spends weekdays in Sao Paulo and weekends at his home in the Rio beachside neighborhood of Barra da Tijuca.

The biggest difference between the two cities, he said, is that Sao Paulo offers higher-quality services. But Rio's informality has its charms.

"If you go in a restaurant, the waiter will call your wife 'honey,'" he said. "This does not happen in Sao Paulo."

Curiously, this fierce rivalry doesn't extend to football, a sphere where each city's crosstown rivalries are far more intense, like the one between Rio's clubs Flamengo and Fluminense, which is often compared here to the animus between the Yankees and Red Sox. The rivalry is so famous that Brazilians refer to an irresolvable feud as a "Fla-Flu." In Sao Paulo, it is the clash between Sao Paulo and Corinthians.

"In my view, the rivalry between Sao Paulo and Rio was too fierce for football," said Martinho da Vila, a famous Brazilian composer and singer.

As with New Yorkers and Angelenos, Paulistanos and Cariocas (as people from Sao Paulo and Rio are known) enjoy playing up the extreme images at each other's expense.

"We tend to see Paulistanos as very busy, anxious, always very stressed about work, and of course very stressed about traffic," said Gaia Passarelli, 37, a native Paulistana writer who recently penned an online piece "15 Signs You Were Born and Raised In Sao Paulo." ("No. 13: You know a nostalgic old-timer who remembers when it was not only possible but normal to swim in Rio Tiete," the city's befouled river.)

"We tend to see Cariocas as those relaxed, elegant and very easygoing people," she said. "But at the same time, have you ever driven a car in Rio? It's so much worse than in Sao Paulo. All that easygoingness of Cariocas disappears when they are behind the wheel."

In some respects the cities are more like fraternal twins than polar opposites. Both are sprawling megalopolises, similarly burdened with widespread poverty, struggling educational and transportation systems, and, historically, high levels of violent crime.

But in other ways they're as different as flip-flops and high heels, white sand and poured concrete.

Sao Paulo, with a population of about 11.3 million, is the largest city proper in the Western and Southern hemispheres. Though hardly in Rio's class in terms of natural physical beauty--few places are--it has a nearly 30% higher per capita GDP and is Brazil's hub for business, finance, gastronomy and the arts, as well as home to its top university, the University of Sao Paulo.

It is also the country's most ethnically diverse city, with large numbers of Brazilians of Italian, Japanese, Lebanese, and African descent.

"Our city is multicultural. It's almost a requirement to have an open mind in Sao Paulo," said Marcos "Markone" Gonçalves, a tattoo and graffiti artist who has inked many of his clients with symbols of his hometown. To criticisms that he and other Paulistanos work too hard, he said, "We work all day, then we go out all night, and that's the way we like it. I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Sao Paulo is a place for a lot of fusion," said Jennifer Stumm, an American classical violist who occasionally visits the city. "It's gritty, there's energy."

If Sao Paulo plays the role of aggressive up-and-comer, Rio over the last half-century has struggled to shape a new identity. For decades it was indisputably the nation's No. 1 metropolis, capital first of the Empire of Brazil, then of republican Brazil until 1960, when parvenu Brasilia usurped it.

Its official population is around 6.3 million. But interlacing the city are hundreds of favelas, or slums, not all of which are officially recognized and included in census counts.

Rio's beaches, sybaritic night life and carnival theatrics still supply the postcard images that draw throngs of tourists. But a grimmer vision of Rio, riven by poverty, environmental degradation and ruthless drug traffickers, has taken hold over the years and was crystallized by the 2002 hit film "City of God." Set in Rio's violent slums, "City of God" depicted Rio as a lost paradise, a cesspool of sensuality and savagery ruled by predatory gangs.

"People have a lot of prejudice related to the violence," said Carlos Alberto Rebello, 63, regulation director at Brazil's stock exchange, BMFBovespa, who was born in Rio but now lives in Sao Paulo. "We still see Paulistas afraid to go to Rio because of years and years of images of violence in Rio."

For Cariocas, this summer's World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, which Rio will host, offer a chance to show the world they're making a comeback.

"We've got beautiful beaches, the people are also beautiful...it's a celebration city," said Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes. Even so, Paes acknowledges that several of his former law-school classmates, as well as his own brother, all left Rio over the years and settled in Sao Paulo.

But despite the jokes and mutual stereotypes, Brazil's two biggest cities appear locked in a yin-yang embrace, where each needs the other to help define itself.

Da Vila, the singer, says his career success owes much to both cities. He appreciates the professionalism of Paulistanos, the openness and warmth of Cariocas. He even wrote a well-known song, "Daqui Pra La...De La Pra Ca," about his seesawing love affair with both cities.

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# 'Hey, Lettuce Hands!' and Other Brazilian Lingo

#  'Hey, Lettuce Hands!' and Other Brazilian Lingo

_By Hannah Karp_

_June 16, 2014_

If World Cup watchers hear Brazilian fans hollering about giving out "chocolate," they shouldn't get their hopes up for dessert: It probably just means that Brazil is pummeling its opponent.

Just as Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, Brazilians have a cornucopia of nuanced terms to describe every conceivable idea or situation that might arise in soccer, the country's official national obsession. But many of the expressions, if translated literally, are likely to confuse novice Portuguese speakers, not to mention those who have studied up on the plane.

Local fans shouting to the popcorn guy, " _o pipoqueiro_ ," for example, aren't trying to get the concessionaire's attention: They're referring to a much-hyped player who buckles under pressure and spends the whole game popping about aimlessly, like popcorn.

Fans muttering about lettuce and chickens, meanwhile, are likely disgusted with their goalkeeper: a goalie whose fingers graze the ball as it goes into the net can be called "lettuce hands" in Portuguese, while a goalie who misses shot after shot evokes the image of a clumsy farmer trying to "catch chickens" in the coop.

Other terms have no English equivalents. They reflect the unique style and psychology Brazilians bring to the game. _Firula_ , for example, is a slang word used to describe razzle-dazzle moves that don't achieve anything. It's used commonly in questioning whether a Brazilian is playing the country's signature _futebol arte_ , its beautiful game, or simply showing off.

On the plus side for nervous travelers, fans screaming for the "sheriff" (sheh-ree-fee) likely haven't been robbed: The term applies to a defensive player who is running the show. The Portuguese word for "thief," meanwhile, is just a nickname for a player who comes from nowhere to take the ball from an opponent.

Here is a primer on Brazilian soccer expressions:

_Chocolate_ /chocolate (Sho-ko-la-chee): A team gives its opponent "a chocolate" when it massacres its rival.

_Salto alto_ /high-heel shoe (sahl-too altoo) A team goes into a game wearing "a high-heel shoe" when assuming it will easily win, but loses.

_Fazer cera_ /to wax (fah-zer ser-ah): Keeping control of the ball simply to run out the clock.

_Frangueiro_ /chicken guy (frahn-gay-roo): A goalie unable to catch the ball, evoking the image of a farmer trying to catch chickens. Fans also say that a goalkeeper " _tomou um frango_ ": took a chicken.

_M ao de alface _/lettuce hands (mao-jee-alfas): When the goalkeeper attempts to stop a shot but hits the ball with his hands so softly that it goes through anyway.

_Tapete_ /carpet (tah-peh-chee): A soccer field in perfect condition.

_Drible da vaca_ /cow's dribble (dree-blee-dah-vah-kah): When a player runs toward an opponent and kicks the ball to one side of his opponent while running around the opponent's other side, regaining possession of the ball again behind the opponent's back.

_Peixinho_ /little fish (pay-shee-nyoo): A player who dives, slides and head-butts the ball into the net to score.

_Paradinha_ /little stop (pah-rah-jeen-yah): A pause or fake kick before a real shot is taken to trick the goalie--a popular Brazilian move outlawed in 2010.

_Amarelou_ /became yellow (ah-mah-reh-loh): Losing a game out of excessive fear or respect for the opponent.

_Na gaveta_ /in the drawer (nah gaveh-tah) or _Onde a coruja dorme_ /where the owl sleeps (ohn-jee a coh-roo-jah dor-mee): A shot so well-angled that the goalkeeper can't reach it.

_Na banheira_ /in the bathtub (nah bahn-yay-rah): An offside position.

_Cavar uma falta_ /to dig a hole (kah-vahr oomah faltah): Faking a foul, trying to trick the referee.

_Do meio da rua_ / from the middle of the street (doo may-oo dah hoo-ah): A shot attempted from very far away.

_Caneta_ /pen (cah-neh-tah): A move in which a player passes the ball between the legs of another player.

_Gol rel ampago_/flash score (gohl heh-lahm-pah-goh): A goal scored very fast as the match begins.

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# In Brazil, Girls Are Still Left on the Sidelines in Soccer

#  In Brazil, Girls Are Still Left on the Sidelines in Soccer

_By Patricia Kowsmann_

_June 18, 2014_

Belo Horizonte, Brazil—It is often said here that soccer is so popular because it doesn't discriminate. Rich kids play with poor, black with white. Everyone has a chance of superstardom. as long as you aren't a girl. Then, soccer may be one of the most discriminating sports ever.

It has been more than 20 years, but I remember as if it were yesterday. My daily school breaks mostly spent standing on the sideline of the soccer field, waiting and hoping for a boy to let me in the game. I can count on one hand how many times I was allowed to play. I don't have enough fingers to count how many times I was told "This isn't for girls."

One day, I showed up at school wearing a pair of kichutes—Brazilian sneakers that look like soccer cleats. Bad idea. In the eyes of my classmates that meant only one thing: My dream wasn't to play soccer, but to be a boy. I learned then what bullying was.

Fast forward to today and it is now common to see girls playing 'futevolei' at the beach in Rio. Brazil now has a women's soccer national team, and a good one. Marta, known around the world as "Pele with a skirt," is a legend. Her talent is respected by men, and has inspired many girls to become players.

Soccer is popular among Brazilian women, but girls still often find playing opportunities hard to come by. (Patricia Kowsmann/WSJ).

Still, you just have to look at the numbers to see that not all is well. According to a global survey by FIFA, women made up less than 1% of the two million registered soccer players in Brazil in 2006—the most recent study on women's participation in soccer that could be found. In comparison, almost 40% of the registered players in the U.S. were women, with the majority of the players under age 18. The U.S. also had six times more women's soccer clubs in 2006.

How can Brazil, a country that lives and breathes soccer, shut out girls like this?

"The problem is purely cultural," says Luciane Castro, a sports journalist and member of a commission formed by Brazil's sports ministry in 2012 to find ways to improve the visibility of women's soccer in the country.

"We live in a macho society, where not only men, but also women, including mothers, tell girls at a young age that soccer is a boy's thing."

Ironically, Brazilian women made up 53% of the country's viewership of the 2010 World Cup.

Viewership and sponsorship of women's soccer in the country, meanwhile, is dismal all around. As a result, professional players face an array of problems, from low salaries to job instability.

In 2011, the famous Santos club in São Paulo, which was then paying over 1 million reais ($447,000) a month to its star Neymar, decided to end the women's team, citing a lack of revenue to cover the 1.5 million reais in yearly costs.

"The problem with women's soccer in Brazil is lack of infrastructure and investment, not only at the national level, but also locally," said Daiane Bagé, a member of Brazil's national team, who saw many friends at Santos become unemployed overnight.

Despite being considered one of the best in the world, Bagé, who plays for another club in São Paulo, doesn't rely solely on soccer as a source of income. She is the proud owner of a professional ice cream machine and on weekends, can be found selling ice cream at a soccer stadium in a town nearby.

"I was lucky because my family has always given me support, and as a girl I had a coach who liked women's soccer. But overall it is hard to imagine parents giving incentive to their daughters to go out there and be part of a sport that won't give them a stable future," she says.

If Bagé considers herself lucky, imagine Briana Scurry, a former U.S. goalkeeper who led her country to World Cup and Olympic wins. Scurry, who grew up in the Minneapolis area, received a full athletic scholarship to the University of Massachusetts.

"In the U.S., as a girl, you know soccer can put you through college," said Scurry, who by age 13 was playing in girls-only teams in after-school programs.

Brazil doesn't have college sports, and it barely offers in-school sports programs.

In a recent visit to my former high school, boys happily played soccer during the break. A girl stood behind the fence, starring at them.

Do you like playing soccer?, I asked.

She nodded yes.

Do you play much?

She shook her head and left.

###

# How the World Cup Became the Cup of Memes

#  How the World Cup Became the Cup of Memes

_By Loretta Chao_

_June 24, 2014_

São Paulo _—_ Amid the celebrations and tears of this year's World Cup, Brazilian fans say this is the funniest tournament they've ever followed on the Internet.

They're calling the competition not just the Copa do Mundo, but the "Copa dos Memes"—the Cup of Memes.

The jokes started with the opening ceremony, which was unexpectedly lame by Brazilian standards: some dancers and drummers in mismatched costumes standing around a glowing ball in the center of Arena Corinthians in São Paulo.

An Internet prankster took a photo of a blue orb about the size of a basketball with a handful of children's toys scattered haphazardly around it on their carpet. Then came a Portuguese caption that translates to "make your own World Cup opening ceremony at home."

With a clever image and just a few words, the post helped Brazilians laugh off their disappointment over a show that failed to uphold the country's reputation for throwing epic parties. The gag was a runaway hit, shared thousands of times through social networks and chat applications such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

From there, the jokes about the competition have kept on rolling.

When a scrappy Mexico team played Brazil to a scoreless tie behind a series of saves by Guillermo Ochoa, the Mexican goalkeeper became the focus of several Internet memes. The most memorable: a phony advertisement that superimposed his face on a packet of condoms. Roughly translated, it read: "Not one (expletive) thing shall pass."

When Chile beat Spain, eliminating the reigning champion from the tournament, Brazilians joked about Chile kicking its colonizer out of Latin America. Another meme appeared with a photo of Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana beach beside a photo of the Spanish team labeled "Copacabano," a play on the Portuguese phrase for "the Cup is over."

The jokes have become so prevalent that this World Cup is expected to generate the most social-media posts of any megaevent in history, in part because Brazil is such a vibrant social media center, analysts say.

With about 200 million inhabitants, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest Internet market by population and growing, according to market researcher comScore. The country is a top-five market for Facebook, Facebook's Instagram, Google Inc.'s YouTube, and Twitter Inc.

Brazil is hardly the only country where people enjoy a good viral Internet joke. After the Netherlands' Robin van Persie scored what is considered the goal of the tournament—a remarkable header against Spain, setting in motion a 5-1 rout—Dutch fans began posting photos of themselves mimicking his flying strike with the hashtag "#persieing."

Robin van Persie's famous goalscoring dive against Spain. (Getty)

When England's elimination became a certainty, fans of the Three Lions eased the sting with humor. Many shared the cover of a magazine that featured an altered photo of the team getting off a plane in Brazil; a speech balloon from the pilot asked if he should keep the engine running.

But it is Brazilians who are setting the pace, thanks to their heavy use of social media and feverish interest as tournament hosts. Facebook said on Friday that Brazil has the most users of any country posting messages about the World Cup.

Instant messaging application WhatsApp has also become a ubiquitous means for Brazilians to share jokes. Developed in the U.S., the smartphone app has gained a strong following in Brazil because it allows them to chat across different mobile operating systems. Users such as Victor Santos, a 21-year-old English teacher in São Paulo, have joined various group chats where they can post funny videos and photos throughout the day.

"The memes of this Cup are the best," Santos said.

One of his favorites: a photo of Spain's Diego Costa, a native Brazilian who played for Spain's national team instead. In the photo, which circulated after Spain's loss last week, Costa is holding a cellphone with the caption: "Hello, [Brazilian coach Felipe] Scolari? You know I was kidding, right?"

Brazil's unique brand of self-deprecating humor lends itself well to one-liner Internet memes, said Juliana Algañaraz, chief executive of Porta dos Fundos, a Brazilian comedic group.

Brazilians "don't mind making fun of themselves," she said. "They don't take it too seriously, they don't have intellectual pretensions."

When it comes to Brazilian jokes and trash talking, no one is safe. Algañaraz has lived in Brazil for 15 years, but she is originally from Argentina, Brazil's soccer archrival. That means she is frequently the subject of her Brazilian friends' jokes. "They have respect for no one. But this is a very good way of life," she said.

Meanwhile, Brazil's strong traditional media is also a reason why people connect so well online, said Ronaldo Lemos, director of the Institute for Internet and Society in Rio de Janeiro. The vast reach of Brazil's main broadcaster, Globo TV, means Brazilians are frequently watching the same television programs and have many common conversation topics to relate to.

Lemos said he expects the use of memes in Brazil to extend far beyond soccer, and that they will play a role in turning politics into pop culture leading up to the country's presidential elections in October.

"This has been one of the best parts of the World Cup," he said. "It's amazing."

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# Over $500 Million Later, Brazil's Maracanã Is Still Cursed

#  Over $500 Million Later, Brazil's Maracana Is Still Cursed

_By Will Connors_

_July 11, 2014_

Rio de Janeiro--More than 74,000 fans are expected to file into the storied Maracana stadium on Sunday to watch Germany face Argentina in the World Cup final, but Brazilian fans will be wondering what could have been. There was only one game the host nation could have played there--the final. And in case you hadn't heard, they didn't make it.

The Maracana opened in 1950 for that year's World Cup, the last time Brazil hosted the tournament. Brazil lost in the final game to Uruguay, a result that is considered a national tragedy and bears the nickname for the place in which it occurred: the Maracanazo.

For this World Cup, the legacy of the Maracana will likely be tied to its high cost and that the Seleçao failed to reach their ultimate goal of winning at home. It is still a national icon, but one tinged with disappointment.

Instead, it will be German and Argentine fans marveling at the state-of-the-art video screens, seats with open sight lines and modern bathrooms.

The stadium, one of the soccer world's most famed venues, has been renovated three times since 2000, at great cost. The most recent renovation, for the World Cup and Olympics, cost over $500 million. In addition to the World Cup final, the Maracana also will host the opening ceremony of the 2016 summer Olympics.

And while the new Maracana boasts all the trappings of a modern arena, many Brazilians yearn for the old stadium. It was cramped and at times dangerous, but tickets were cheap. In the standing room-only areas, people of varied economic backgrounds stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their cheers shaking the foundations.

"It was dirty, the bathrooms were terrible. There was a constant smell of urine in the whole stadium," says Marcio Neves, 40, a tax lawyer in Rio de Janeiro who as a young boy would go to games with his godfather. "But the atmosphere was great."

The final game in 1950 against Uruguay was also noteworthy for its attendance: officially 173,850, but most estimates for the total number of people that crammed themselves inside top 200,000 people. Since then, the stadium has hosted a number of legendary games between the four local teams that share the space. Pele scored his 1,000th goal there, in 1969. It is often referred to as the Temple.

Several notable concerts have been held at the Maracana. Frank Sinatra sang in front of 180,000 people there to mark the stadium's 30th anniversary. Madonna and Kiss played in front of their own mammoth crowds. Pope John Paul II led what is often considered the largest-ever Catholic mass there.

But in more recent years, as its concrete shell aged, the stadium has been the source of controversy. In 1992, a section of the upper deck collapsed, killing three and injuring 50.

To make room for more parking lots ahead of the World Cup and Olympics, the government evicted area residents, sparking a public outcry. One structure, an abandoned museum dedicated to Brazil's indigenous population, was spared demolition last year only after a widely-publicized effort to save it.

Inside, the standing room-only areas are gone, replaced by modern seats and luxury boxes. Ticket prices are now out of reach of most Brazilians.

"It was really one of the few really true public spaces in the city," says Christopher Gaffney, an architecture professor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. "Rich and poor, black and white and brown, could come together. Social distinctions were forgotten temporarily. That's no longer true."

David Goldblatt, author of a book about Brazilian soccer called "Futebol Nation," referred to the new design as "architectural vandalism and cultural desecration."

So even though the shell remains largely the same, the inside of the stadium has been transformed.

"It has all the positive aspects of security, it's clean, it's a beautiful stadium," Alves, the tax lawyer, says. "But, to me, it looks a little sad. The Maracana is still there, but it's different."

Sergio Manhaes, a 55 year-old banker in Rio, agrees.

"It's beautiful, but on the other hand I do miss the old one," he says. "It's not the same."

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# THE CUP AROUND THE WORLD

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# It's a Matter of 'Goal' vs. 'Golazo!'

#  It's a Matter of 'Goal' vs. 'Golazo!'

_By Reed Johnson_

_June 5, 2014_

If you're an English-speaking World Cup viewer in the U.S., you'll most likely be tuning in to ABC or ESPN this summer for game telecasts from Brazil. Or perhaps the BBC, the gold standard of dispassionate sports analysis.

But the Spanish-language network Univision Deportes also plans to compete hard for English-speaking World Cup fans by offering what it claims is a more colorful, intense and at times enthusiastically partisan soccer-watching experience. Even if you don't speak the language, the company is betting you'll want to hear announcers heralding each score with the exclamation "Golazo!"

"We strongly think that watching the game in Spanish is just more fun," said Daniele Grassi, senior director for sport digital for Univision Deportes, the two-year-old, soccer-centric sports division of Univision Communications Inc. "So we think that even the international community that is not Spanish-speaking, or the main language is not Spanish, or English-speaking users, will want to watch the games with us."

Grassi has cause for optimism. During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, a number of English-language media commentators, as well as fans online, expressed their penchant for viewing matches on Univision. Nate Berg, writing for the New Republic, declared that even though he didn't speak the language fluently, "I vastly prefer my futbol en español." He went on to praise Univision's Pablo Ramirez as "arguably the most entertaining soccer announcer calling the game today," an opinion shared by a number of soccer cognoscenti.

Univision performed well at the 2010 World Cup, even though it hadn't yet launched Univision Deportes. In 18 of the South African tournament's 64 games, the Spanish-language broadcaster outperformed ESPN and its parent company, ABC, according to Univision figures. For the 2010 final, Univision had 8.3 million total viewers compared with ABC's 13 million, the company says.

Univision Deportes, which holds exclusive U.S. Spanish-language TV and digital rights to this year's World Cup, hopes to boost those numbers. The network will have three dedicated studios in Brazil, is dispatching a team of 150 and will deploy newfangled technologies such as Augmented Reality graphics and multi-touch screens.

Another priority was expanding its digital platforms, including launching a new bilingual Deportes app, as well as increasing its level of social-media engagement.

"The time of the games is perfect for digital, because most of the games will be during the working week and during working hours," Grassi said. "People will need to watch the game either on their desktop or their tablet, their mobile phone and so on."

Univision will offer not only bilingual but multi-accented commentary. On-air personalities will tweet in both Spanish and English. The network's on-air punditocracy will include the former U.S. national-team defender Marcelo Balboa, Italian-Argentine Mauro Camoranesi and Hristo Stoichkov, a former Bulgarian international who spent part of his career with Barcelona.

"So he speaks Spanish with a Bulgarian accent, which makes it interesting," said Juan Carlos Rodriguez, president of Univision Deportes.

Also, during this World Cup, Grassi said, Univision "for the first time" will devote equal resources to covering the U.S. team and Mexico's _El Tri_. That binational focus reflects the network's desire to appeal both to English-speaking drop-ins and later-generation U.S. Latinos.

"Second-generation, third-generation Hispanics, they start to feel as American as they are Hispanic," he said. "So they will follow the United States and their own team."

As the U.S. Latino population has soared to more than 50 million, it has fed gains in soccer's U.S. popularity. Advertisers and media companies also are attuning to English-speaking consumers who happen to have an affinity for Latin culture. Besides Univision, another Spanish-language sports network that may be poised to siphon off English-speaking soccer fans in years to come is ESPN Deportes.

Rodolfo Martinez, vice president of production for ESPN International and ESPN Deportes, said his company's soccer coverage has attracted English-speaking fans by adopting the spirit and "rhythm" of Spanish-language announcers, even when the telecasts are in English.

He cited play-by-play announcer Fernando Palomo, a bilingual Salvadoran-American who will be calling World Cup games for ESPN, in English, featuring Mexico, Honduras and other Latin American teams.

But, Martinez said, Palomo will use the emotive Latin style for announcing goals, as well as deliver his play-by-play in the more rapid manner of Spanish-language telecasts. He will also pronounce Latin players' names with the correct accents and emphases.

"You get a different flavor on the telecast when you combine those three things: the goal call, the rhythm, and the pronunciations of the players' names," Martinez said.

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# Now in a TV Studio, Maradona Is Still Taking a Lot of Shots

#  Now in a TV Studio, Maradona Is Still Taking a Lot of Shots

_By Taos Turner_

_June 18, 2014_

Buenos Aires--For some members of the church of soccer, there is only one God--Argentine idol Diego Maradona. Now, four-years after his deity last descended on the World Cup as coach of Argentina's all-too-human 2010 team, the legendary left-footed striker is back.

This time, he is grabbing headlines not from the field but from a television studio in Brazil, where he is co-host of a daily World Cup show aired by Telesur, a 24-hour news network created by Venezuela with help from other left-leaning governments on the continent.

With thick, pitch-black eyebrows, dangling earrings and a broad smile, Maradona waxes philosophic on the show about everything from Fidel Castro--"the greatest man in history"--to Argentine sovereign debt and the physical prowess of German players. "They're so good it's scary," he said after Germany crushed Portugal 4-0.

The show, which will air for the duration of the cup, is a mix of leftist politics and culture, sports history and sometimes-fun, sometimes serious commentary on the World Cup.

In an early episode, Maradona went on the attack against FIFA, soccer's governing body, saying it makes billions of dollars for itself but does little for players and countries that spend billions hosting the cup.

"How barbaric. How ugly," he said, claiming FIFA unfairly forces host nations to play by its rules. "Countries can't do anything against them. If they decide soda has to be sold some place, it has to be sold in that place."

FIFA head Sepp Blatter should be ashamed of the way he runs the organization, Maradona said: "If Blatter is watching us, he should hide in the bathroom."

The show's name, De Zurda, or "from the left," is a play on words, referring both to Maradona's lionized left foot as well as the show's ideological bent.

In announcing the show, Maradona earlier this year offered sweeping praise for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and late President Hugo Chavez, or "El Comandante." Maradona called himself a "soldier for Venezuela" and said that he would do anything to defend the country from the lies of "disgusting" imperialists.

"We're going to transmit the entire World Cup from Brazil for Telesur because that's the way El Comandante Chavez would have wanted it," he said.

The show, which is broadcast in Spanish and is available in 110 countries, has been surprisingly successful, says Patricia Villegas, Telesur's president. She says the network is already looking to extend the show beyond the cup.

"The idea was to have Maradona host the show not just because he's the great World Cup figure but because he's a standout figure in Latin America," Villegas said. "We're constantly getting requests from TV and radio stations around the world to use clips from the show."

Soccer purists might prefer ESPN if they don't want to hear Maradona's thoughts on living in Cuba or meeting late Chilean President Salvador Allende's daughter. But for those interested in Latin America, the show is a hit.

Maradona seems excited about the show and eager to look good.

"Do a good job putting the makeup on me," he says in one clip, "because they're watching me in Buenos Aires and everywhere in the world."

Dressed in a pinstriped suit and lathered in a massive coating of makeup, Maradona said last week he had no favorites to win the Cup. He warned Argentina and Brazil not to be cocky. Still, he said this is Latin America's year for glory.

"Every time (European teams) have crossed the pond their performance has declined, so let's have faith in our own," he said.

At times speaking slowly and sometimes repeating himself, Maradona, who is 53, offers insight into on-field play and off-field strategy. Brazil has exceptional talent but needs to be much hungrier to win, he said.

In one show, Maradona discussed his infamous 1986 "Hand of God" goal in which he illegally punched the ball into the net, scoring against England in the World Cup in Mexico. Unrepentant, he said he would do it again.

"I put a poker face on" for the referee, Maradona said, adding that when he realized he'd gotten away with the goal he thought, "Thank God!"

###

# The South Americans Sitting Out of the World Cup

#  The South Americans Sitting Out of the World Cup

_By Andrea L opez Cruzado_

_June 22, 2014_

Language teacher Jansen Costa was born in Peru in 1982, the last time the Andean country played in a World Cup.

"We have become the generation of the 'we-almost-did-it' fans," said Costa, who will turn 32 next month.

For citizens of the 32 countries at the World Cup, the monthlong competition is a chance to sport their national jerseys, paint their faces the colors of their flags, sing their national anthem with thousands of their countrymen and scream their lungs out every time their national stars score a goal.

But for the countries whose teams didn't qualify for the tournament, it's about watching other countries play the beautiful game. For nations like Peru, the World Cup largely becomes an exercise in finding another team to root for. The choice for Costa is easy: His parents are Brazilians who immigrated to Peru in the early 1980s as missionaries.

Renzo Ricalde, a 35-year-old executive at an insurance company in Lima, was just 3 when Peru played its last World Cup in Spain in 1982. His first real memory of the championship is Mexico in 1986, which Argentina won. By the next World Cup, Italy in 1990, Ricalde had become a die-hard soccer fan, finding in Argentina a source of victory and glory that Peru never gave him.

"Since Peru was left out of the World Cup, I always cheer for Argentina," he said.

Bruno Rivas, a Peruvian journalist with a Master's degree in cultural studies, says rooting for another national team and claiming their success as one's own "is a very Peruvian thing to do....The years of frustration have generated that," he said.

Peru is a head-scratcher in international soccer. It has a population of 35 million, a fast-growing economy and has become a hub of food and culture. It also has some soccer history. Teofilo 'El Nene' Cubillas is only one of two players--the other being Germany's Miroslav Klose--to score five different goals in two World Cups.

Peru attended its first World Cup in 1930 in Uruguay--by invitation--and qualified for the 1970, 1978 and 1982 tournaments. It hasn't been back since.

Gerardo Álvarez, a Peruvian historian who specializes in sports, says that is likely because there is little investment in soccer, the stadiums are crumbling and security is always a concern. It doesn't help that there are two different soccer associations with sometimes competing agendas: the Peruvian Football Federation, which manages the national team, and the Sporting Association of Professional Football.

Jaime Cordero, a sports columnist at "La Republica," a Lima daily newspaper, blames poor nutrition and training during Peru's economic malaise of the 1980s and early 1990s. He says the only hope for a quick fix is if it starts raining Maradonas--referring to Argentine great Diego Maradona, who is long retired.

This year's World Cup may have been Peru's best chance for a return. Host country Brazil qualified directly to the tournament, leaving an extra spot available for South America's 10 national teams. But Peru didn't win enough qualifying matches to make the cut.

The Peruvian Football Federation didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

The pain is magnified because most of the countries surrounding Peru are part of Brazil 2014. Peruvians, on the other hand, have to sit back and watch.

Sebastian Espinoza, 13, has his own assessment of why _la selecci on_, as the national team is called, has been a no-show at the World Cup: "They lack commitment," he said from his home in Lima. A high-school student and standout soccer player, he has dreams of changing Peru's luck.

"As long as our mentality doesn't change, we won't get anywhere," he said.

###

# Colombia, 20 Years After Escobar

#  Colombia, 20 Years After Escobar

_By Dan Molinski_

_June 27, 2014_

Bogota, Colombia--As Colombia's soccer team laces up its cleats to meet Uruguay in the World Cup's round of 16 on Saturday, excitement here has reached peaks not seen in years. Winner of Group C, Colombia is formidable, having dismantled three teams, filled stadiums in Brazil with thousands of Colombians and even won acclaim for its players' post-goal dance, now an Internet sensation.

But for many here, that excitement is tempered by knowledge that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the murder of Andres Escobar.

At the 1994 World Cup in Los Angeles, Escobar inadvertently deflected a cross from American John Harkes into Colombia's own goal. Colombia, which Brazil's legendary player Pele had predicted might win it all that year, went on to lose to the U.S. and bowed out early from the tournament, disappointing all of Colombia.

Two weeks later, in his native Medellin, Escobar was shot dead outside a bar, possibly in retribution for the own goal, by a man with known links to drug traffickers.

"It's the 20-year anniversary, and we of course never want to forget the killing of Andres Escobar because he was an innocent, young man who didn't deserve to die," said Álvaro Gonzalez, a 65-year-old Bogota resident and devoted soccer fan, as he watched a World Cup match at an upscale Bogota shopping mall. "But at this moment, as we advance in the World Cup, we are reluctant to rehash this event and its relations to cocaine and violence. These are precisely the images we're trying to overcome."

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Santiago Escobar, the 50-year-old brother of Andres Escobar, said he is unaware of any plans at the World Cup to honor his brother on the 20th anniversary. Were he still alive, Andres Escobar would be 47, and his absence remains a source of anguish for the family, Santiago said.

"My brother was a respectful, honest man," Escobar said. "He left a great memory, a great mark on Colombia, and we will commemorate him on July 2 (the anniversary of his death) this year, as we do every year."

Even in Colombia, a country torn by a decades-old guerrilla conflict fueled by drug trafficking, the killing stands out as one of the nation's moments of infamy. Enrique Santos, a well-known Colombian journalist and brother to President Juan Manuel Santos, wrote at the time that the slaying of Andres Escobar made him ashamed to be Colombian for the first time ever. "It's was a traumatic event that moved the country," Santos told The Wall Street Journal this week, adding that he fears the masterminds of the killing have yet to be brought to justice.

About five days after his team was eliminated from the 1994 World Cup, Escobar was shot in the parking lot of a nightclub. Humberto Muñoz, a bodyguard and driver for top members of a Colombian drug cartel, was arrested shortly after the killing and charged with murder. He confessed and was convicted, then served 11 years of a 43-year sentence before being freed in 2005 for good behavior. Many believe Muñoz was merely a hired gun and say cartel leaders who may have made large bets on Colombia in the World Cup ordered the hit. Others believe the murder was merely reflective of the lawlessness gripping Colombia then.

The episode is a painful reminder of the violence that plagues Colombia, even as it has become a safer country, a tourist destination and a Wall Street darling. So as Argentina-born coach Jose Pekerman, striker Jackson "Cha Cha Cha" Martinez and others from _la seleccion_ prepare to take on Uruguay--which will be playing without star Luis Suarez--Gonzalez said Colombia is unsure how, or even if, to commemorate this infamous moment.

For Gonzalez and other Colombia fans, the Uruguay game is a chance at redemption--a way to finally put a positive, lasting imprint on the country, in both the sports world and beyond.

So far in the tournament, Colombia is doing just that. Stadiums in Brazil have been packed with fun-loving Colombians, with 54,477 paying tickets to see games, the fifth-largest group of foreigners in Brazil, according to FIFA.

The on-field performance of the team, which was No. 8 in the FIFA world ranking before the tournament began, has been nearly flawless, even without the presence of its top player, striker Radamel Falcao, who is injured.

Colombia is one of just four teams, alongside Belgium, the Netherlands and Argentina, to win all three of its games in the first round. On Tuesday it defeated Japan 4-1 in a lopsided match that allowed Pekerman to substitute in goalkeeper Faryd Mondragon, who at age 43 became the oldest player to ever take part in the World Cup. Mondragon was a young member of that team that included Escobar.

Michael Zimbalistco-directed with his brother Jeff a 2010 documentary --"The Two Escobars"--that looks at how the fate of Andres Escobar intertwined with that of Pablo Escobar (no relation), Colombia's most famous drug kingpin. Pablo Escobar was also gunned down in Medellin, seven months before Andres Escobar was killed.

Zimbalist said he understands the hesitancy on the part of many Colombians to focus much on Andres Escobar's death. "Colombians are so affected viscerally by the images and associations of their country as a hotbed of violence, corruption and drugs. Most Americans have a tough time understanding it," Zimbalist said in a phone interview from California. "I hope Colombia can really turn it on as the World Cup continues."

Colombians erupted in anger when Dutch actress Nicolette van Dam, a goodwill ambassador to the children's charity Unicef, posted on Twitter a doctored photo that seemed to show two Colombian soccer players snorting cocaine. She later apologized and said she didn't mean to offend Colombians, and later resigned from the group.

Still, many other Colombians say the country is oversensitive when it comes to Colombia's image of drugs and violence. They say the country should focus less on trying to prove something to its detractors during events like the World Cup, and just focus on the sport.

"We complained about this Dutch woman...yet at the same time we are exporting soap operas that deal with drug traffickers, said Omar Rincon, a Colombian pundit. "We need to be more consistent."

###

# Argentina's Soccer Win Helps Country Forget Woes—For Now

#  Argentina's Soccer Win Helps Country Forget Woes—For Now

_By Shane Romig and Taos Turner_

_July 9, 2014_

BUENOS AIRES—Struggling with a moribund economy and facing the possibility of a debt default, Argentina got a much-needed boost to the national psyche Wednesday when the national team beat the Netherlands in the World Cup, earning a shot at the title against Germany.

Thousands who had gathered in the downtown Plaza San Martin to watch the game on a giant screen exploded in jubilation, banging drums, blowing horns and waving flags as firecrackers were set off.

Crowds of fans, many wearing the white and sky-blue striped shirts of La Seleccion, poured out to the capital's major thoroughfare, the 9th of July Avenue, and onto plazas and streets in cities nationwide. Waiters walked out of restaurants to join the celebration on the streets, with the staff of one popular Italian diner, La Parolaccia, singing soccer songs amid honking car horns.

"I cried for the first time in 24 years watching a game," said Daniel Finder, a consultant. "The last time I was 15 years old, when we lost the final in 1990. A wonderful feeling. Rationally, this is only a game, but what a beautiful game."

Wednesday was a national holiday, Independence Day. But a big game on a big stage—Arena Corinthians in São Paulo in neighboring Brazil, host of the Cup—led businesses to shutter and streets to clear of traffic as Argentines rooted for the team in their living rooms, bars and restaurants, and public parks.

And when the final whistle blew—and Argentina had won, 4 to 2, in a penalty shootout—Argentines, at least momentarily, forgot the battered economy, a searing corruption scandal and one of the world's highest inflation rates. Now, for the first time in 24 years, Argentina will be in a World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro's cathedral of soccer, Maracanã stadium.

Argentina's Lionel Messi fires a penalty kick during his teams' shooting win over the Netherlands. (Getty)

"I'm very happy," said Jorge Lopez, 46 years old, a shoe-store owner who watched the match on a big screen sent up at Centenario Park. He explained that lately business has been down.

But with the final penalty goal, he put his troubles in the back of his mind. "It cheered me up," he said. "We won."

Another fan who watched the game, Andres Esteban Botti, a 38-year-old veterinarian, was almost speechless, like many of his countrymen. "Wow, what a way to suffer," he said. "Joy, euphoria, emotion—lots of feelings at the same time that are difficult to describe."

It was a victory delivered by players now seen as heroic by their countrymen. In a team loaded with stars, most notably Lionel Messi, the hero on Wednesday was the goalkeeper, Sergio Romero, who stopped two penalty shots to help give Argentina the win.

"It feels great," said Sandra Lavait, a 51-year-old interior decorator who waved a giant Argentine flag on a street corner as her neighbors danced beside her.

For many here, their hopes and dreams had been placed on the team, which had struggled in some Cup matches on the road to the semifinals.

"We demand more from our soccer players than we do from our politicians," said Claudia Varas, a 41-year-old clerk who works in a perfume shop that closed so employees could watch the game. She echoed others who said that the team's success helped people forget their troubles.

"The cup distracts peoples' attention from the economic problems," she said.

She was referring to an economy that is in recession and President Cristina Kirchner's high-stakes dispute with creditors. Argentines are aware that if a deal isn't reached with litigating hedge funds by the end of the month, the country will likely go into default for the second time in 13 years. Her administration has also been hard hit by news that Vice President Amado Boudou has been indicted on charges of corruption and influence peddling. He has denied the charges.

In this country, when the news is bad, soccer has a way of providing comfort. And Argentines, to be sure, are among the most fanatical fans of the sport. Though soccer was introduced by the British more than a century ago, this country of 40 million has produced some of the game's most recognizable stars—as well as won two World Cup championships.

Alfredo Di Stèfano, who died Monday at 88, used magical dribbling and lethal goal scoring to take Real Madrid to one championship after another in the 1950s. Diego Maradona, who led Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title, is known here as "the cosmic one" and considered by many soccer aficionados as the greatest player of all time.

Now, Argentina is just a win away from its third title, buoying expectations here.

"These small joyous events soothe the soul," said Nicolas Puricelli, a 37-year-old physical-education teacher, "especially when the reality in the country punishes us so much."

He said he believes that the outcomes of big games, such as this one, help set "the national mood."

But while the victory delighted Argentines, Nicolas Solari, an analyst with the pollster Poliarquia, said that a victory would only momentarily divert attention from the country's problems.

"The World Cup in Argentina is a popular party that serves to bring happiness and help people momentarily forget their problems," said Mr. Solari. "The effect, though, is temporary."

Mr. Finder, the consultant, agreed, saying that these days Argentines have their minds on the country's many troubles.

"The World Cup is a great temporary distraction," he said. "But it is all quite short-lived, and people are genuinely concerned with the country's economy, and especially with their own personal situations."

—Ken Parks and Juan Forero contributed to this article.

###

# The World Agrees: Soccer Matches Should Be Free on TV

#  The World Agrees: Soccer Matches Should Be Free on TV

_By Taos Turner_

_July 9, 2014_

Buenos Aires—Times are tough for Argentine President Cristina Kirchner. The economy stinks. Inflation is sky-high. Her approval rating stands at around 26%.

Yet after Argentina beat the Netherlands on penalties after the teams were tied 0-0 after 120 minutes in the World Cup semifinals on Wednesday, Kirchner may be reminding the country's soccer-crazed residents that her government enabled them to watch the nerve-racking triumph free. Kirchner's government stripped lucrative broadcasting rights from a private sector partnership in 2009, providing free viewership of local soccer matches to the entire country—meaning most of 42 million Argentines will be able to watch Sunday's final against Germany.

In 2010, the government broadcast World Cup matches free on its state-run television channel and has done so again this year, a move that has proved hugely popular, even among some government critics. Though some World Cup matches were available free before the takeover, many Argentines couldn't see them because they lacked cable TV or lived too far from open-air antennas.

Justifying the takeover of broadcast rights, Kirchner stood beside soccer legend Diego Maradona in 2009 and accused the private sector of "kidnapping goals" from viewers the way the 1976-1983 military dictatorship kidnapped and tortured thousands of Argentines.

"I don't want a society of kidnappings anymore," Kirchner said.

Watching World Cup soccer may not be a basic human right. But leaders across the world recognize that a lot of people view it as such, and that makes the World Cup a political opportunity. In Thailand, a military junta that seized power this spring persuaded a private company—which had planned to air only 22 World Cup games free—to expand that number to all 64 matches. The new leaders called it a strategy to "return happiness to the Thai people."

Fans gather to watch the World Cup in a central neighborhood of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. (Getty/AFP)

In countries that agree on little else, there is agreement that World Cup games ought to be freely viewable. The list of countries where the 2014 World Cup appeared on public or state television, or free on network television, includes Russia, England, Portugal, Venezuela, Ecuador, China, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Greece, Switzerland and Poland. Even countries that didn't qualify, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria all agree that public broadcasters ought to televise free World Cup games.

In the U.S., games on ESPN required a cable subscription, but Univision streamed the games in the early rounds free.

Nowhere are games freer than in Brazil, and that became a problem after Brazil quickly fell behind 5-0 in its embarrassing 7-1 defeat to Germany on Tuesday. The painful remainder of the game—viewable on three different channels—was difficult to escape.

In some places during this World Cup, freedom came with an asterisk. Iran's national broadcast company, IRIB, is airing the games free but with a 10-second delay so it can censor "un-Islamic'' shots of people drinking and women in tank tops and shorts. For the first time, the country has also banned any public viewing of the games at cafes and restaurants, apparently out of concern about what leaders are calling "the unique culture'' of Brazil.

In Italy, the home country's matches were free but other games require a subscription to Sky Italy. In Mexico, broadcasters Televisa and TV Azteca, which between them control more than 90% of the free-to-air television market, planned to air the same 30 World Cup matches. Additional games required a cable subscription.

In Colombia, the approach of the World Cup coincided with a growing standoff between local broadcasters and cable companies. Local broadcasters were demanding a new fee that cable companies didn't want to pay, raising the possibility that local broadcasters—which control World Cup coverage—would stop supplying shows to the cable companies. But with viewership of the games in peril, local broadcasters suddenly announced a decision to put off the fight until at least September, well after World Cup ends.

Here in Argentina, not everybody was thrilled when the government compared private control of soccer-viewership rights to previous eras of oppression. Human-rights activists such as Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel called the comparison a "barbarity."

###

# ABOUT THIS BOOK

#  ABOUT THIS BOOK

"The Unforgettable World Cup: 31 Days of Triumph and Heartbreak in Brazil" was published in July 2014 by The Wall Street Journal.

The cover art was by Chuck Anderson; the source image was from Getty Images. The interior photo illustrations were by Manuel Velez, with source images from Getty. The art director was Manuel Velez. The editors were Sam Walker and David Marino-Nachison.

For more sports coverage from the Journal, visit wsj.com/sports. For questions about this or other e-books from the Journal, e-mail ebooks@wsj.com. For more news, information and subscriptions, visit wsj.com.

This e-Book was produced in conjunction with Vook. For technical support, e-mail support@vook.com.

Copyright (C)2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

